British scientists have discovered that raised levels of the amino acid homocysteine in the blood is one of the causes of cardiovascular disease.

They say that increasing intake of folic acid would be a relatively cheap and simple way of reducing heart disease.

Previous studies have also suggested that eating plenty of folic acid, a type of vitamin B, could help to prevent strokes and some cancers and could potentially halve the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Since folic acid helps to lower homocysteine, the scientists believe increasing intake of the vitamin could help to reduce the risk of disease.

The Department of Health recommends that all women take a daily supplement of 0.4mg of folic acid before they conceive and for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy while the baby’s spine is developing to help prevent spina bifida.

Folic acid is already recommended to pregnant women as it is known to help prevent spina bifida in babies.

Rich dietary sources of folic acid include fortified breakfast cereals, bread, green leafy vegetables such as Brussels sprouts, broccoli, spinach and green beans, oranges, dried beans, peas and lentils.

The study is published today in the British Medical Journal. A team led by David Wald of Barts and the London, Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry were attempting to resolve the ongoing debate over whether homocysteine causes heart attacks and strokes.

They examined evidence from previous studies and found that tests involving large numbers of people and people genetically prone to higher homocysteine levels yielded similar results — that lower homocysteine levels had a protective effect.

Importantly, the tests achieved similar results even though they did not share the same sources of possible errors.

Moreover, although studies of the effects of lowering homocysteine levels were too small to be conclusive, the results were still consistent with the protective effect of folic acid.

The researchers wrote: “The conclusion that homocysteine is a cause of cardiovascular disease explains the observations from all the different types of study, even if the results from one type of study are, on their own, insufficient to reach that conclusion.”

The scientists said that it therefore followed that increasing folic acid consumption would reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke and said that action should be taken to lower homocysteine concentrations.

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