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Some 35% of Americans take B vitamins—folic acid, B12 and B6—many in doses higher than those in multivitamin supplements. Until now, scientists had high hopes that those vitamins could help prevent heart attacks and strokes by lowering blood levels of homocysteine. Previous studies had linked high levels of this amino acid to heart disease, and some researchers even likened homocysteine to cholesterol as a key risk factor. By lowering homocysteine levels, they reasoned, you could lower a patient’s cardiovascular risk—much as statin drugs help by reducing unhealthy cholesterol.
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