People should be cautious about taking vitamin E supplements regularly. A team of international scientists said Friday that doing so can increase the risk of a certain type of stroke. A Reuters story said that researchers from the United States, France and Germany reviewed existing studies of vitamin E and its effect on stroke and found that taking the vitamin increased the risk of haemorrhagic stroke, where bleeding occurs in the brain, by 22 percent, but cuts the risk of ischaemic stroke by 10 percent. Ischaemic stroke accounts for around 70 percent of all cases and happens when a blood clot prevents blood reaching the brain. The researchers stressed the effects on absolute risk are small, with 0.8 more haemorrhagic strokes and 2.1 fewer ischaemic strokes per 1,000 people taking vitamin E. This is equivalent to one ischaemic stroke being prevented for 476 people taking the vitamin, they said, and one extra haemorrhagic stroke for every 1,250 people taking it. Previous research has suggested that taking vitamin E has a protective effect against heart disease and around 13 percent of the US population takes vitamin E as a supplement, the scientists said in their study published in the British Medical Journal. Stroke is the most common cardiovascular problem after heart disease and kills around 5.7 million people worldwide each year. A total of 884 people taking vitamin E had an ischaemic stroke compared with 983 people taking a placebo, meaning people taking the vitamin were 10 percent less likely to have this form of stroke. __
