Thursday Feb 18, 2016 (foodconsumer.org) -- Vitamin C, also known as ascorbic acid, can help reduce medical complications from diabetes mellitus, a study published in African Journal of Biotechnology suggests.   

Background:  Patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus are at higher risk for heart disease as elevated serum glucose react with proteins and form advanced glycation end products (AGEs), a process that leads to vascular complications.  And antioxidants are known to slow the nonenzymatic glycation process.

A study finds that taking vitamin C supplements (the vital nutrient vitamin C cannot be synthesized in humans) can reduce the nonenzymatic glycation and thus the formation of AGEs in patients with diabetes mellitus.

For the study, researchers incubated glucose-spiked blood samples collected from diabetes mellitus patients, with or without vitamin C added for four weeks at 37 oC to see how vitamin C may affect the non-enzymatic glycation process.

As a result, vitamin C was found to reduce the NEG by 20 to 26% and the formation of AGEs by 26 to 28% in diabetic patients in the study group, in comparison to those in the control group.

The in vivo non-enzymatic glycation, which occurs in both healthy people and diabetics, is considered a major factor that promotes the aging process because it can damage the cells and tissue in the body.    Diabetes mellitus patients are at higher risk for heart disease because they tend to have higher levels of serum glucose than healthy people.  

The findings from the study hint that vitamin C supplementation may not only help diabetes mellitus patients to lower risk for diabetic complications, but also slow the aging process in healthy individuals. (David Liu)

Hira Zafar, Munir Ahmad Sheikh, Fatma Hussain, Muhammad Arif Maan, Inhibition of protein glycation and advanced glycation end products by ascorbic acid, African Journal of Biotechnology,  Vol 11, No 51 (2012)