Ask the doctor: Should I worry about my homocysteine level?
Higher dietary intake of B vitamins lowers homocysteine levels, and many foods sold in the United States have been supplemented with B vitamins since the 1980s. In 2006, two large placebo-controlled studies reaffirmed that B vitamins, especially folate, lowered homocysteine levels, but they found no evidence that doing this translated into a reduced risk of heart disease. In addition, a recent analysis of unpublished data about a gene that affects homocysteine levels showed that lifelong moderate elevations in homocysteine have little or no effect on heart disease.
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