Combination oral antioxidant supplementation reduces blood pressure.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Antioxidants and Ascorbic Acid in the context of low blood pressure and orthostatic hypotension.

Twenty-one were attending for treatment of hypertension and 17 were normotensive, attending for minor gastrointestinal complaints.

Subjects were randomly assigned to receive either 8 weeks placebo followed by 2 weeks washout then 8 weeks antioxidants or vice versa.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults, middle-aged adults and older adults.

Forty subjects were recruited from medical outpatient clinics, of whom 38 completed the study.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and crossover.

The participants were allocated by chance, so the Antioxidants group and the comparison group should start out alike.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Antioxidants, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Antioxidants group a baseline to be compared against.

Each person switched between Antioxidants and the comparison at some point, usually with a gap in between.

What Was Measured

Twenty-one were attending for treatment of hypertension and 17 were normotensive, attending for minor gastrointestinal complaints.

PubMed files the paper under topics including Antioxidants, Ascorbic Acid, Blood Pressure, Hypertension, Nitric Oxide, Nitrites and Vitamin E.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Antioxidants and Ascorbic Acid in people with low blood pressure and orthostatic hypotension.

The publication is from 1997 (Clinical science (London, England : 1979)), a journal based in England.

More context: Low blood pressure and orthostatic hypotension research.