Folate cuts risk of hypertension in half

Women between the ages of 27 and 44 who consume at least 1 mg/day of dietary and supplemental folate are at approximately half the risk for incident hypertension as women who consume less than 200 µg/day (RR 0.54; 95% CI, 0.45-0.66), according to researchers from Harvard. The absolute risk reduction (ARR) for these younger women was 8 cases per 1,000 person-years (6.7 vs. 14.8 cases).

The authors found a similar but slightly less profound benefit for women 43 to 70 years of age: 6 cases per 1,000 person-years (34.7 vs. 40.4 cases).

The findings represent the first report of such an association and come from two prospective cohort studies of 93,803 younger women from the Nurses' Health Study II and 62,260 older women from the Nurses' Health Study I.