Table 1.

Selected clinical studies of anti-oxidant therapy associated with cardiovascular disease

Anti-oxidant	Study design		Findings	Interpretation	Reference
Primary prevention
Vitamin C	Prospective Cohort		associated with lower cardiovascular disease risk	Effective	[2–8]
	RCT		no effect on composite cardiovascular events	Non-effective	[9, 10]
Vitamin E	Prospective Cohort		associated with lower cardiovascular disease risk	Effective	[6, 7, 11, 12]
	RCT		no benefit to prevent cardiovascular events, but increase HF	Non-effective or harmful	[9, 13–17]
Beta carotene	RCT		no impact on cardiovascular death or MI	Non-effective or harmful	[9, 18–20]
Secondary prevention		Study subjects
Vitamin C	RCT	women with CAD	increase mortality	Non-effective or harmful	[21, 22]
	RCT	CAD patients	reverse endothelial dysfunction	Effective	[281]
	Prospective cohort	variant angina	attenuate abnormal vasomotor reactivity	Effective	[282]
Vitamin E	RCT	CAD patients	reduce CAD events	Effective	[23]
	RCT	hemodialysis patients	reduce cardiovascular events	Effective	[24]
	RCT	patients after MI	no benefit to prevent cardiovascular events	Non-effective	[25]
	PROBE	variant angina	reverse endothelial dysfunction	Effective	[283]
	RCT	patients with HF	no improvements in prognostic or functional indexes of HF	Non-effective	[284]
Beta carotene	RCT	patients after MI	increase CAD risk	Harmful	[27]
Probucol	RCT	patients after PCI	prevent restenosis	Effective	[32–34]
Succinobucol	RCT	patients after ACS	no benefit to prevent cardiovascular events	Non-effective or harmful	[37]
Edaravone	PROBE	patients with acute MI	decrease infarct size, RI and cardiac event	Effective	[242, 243]
Coenzyme Q10	PROBE or RCT	patients with HF	no improvement of outcome or important cardiac function	Non-effective	[285]
Allopurinol	RCT	patients with HF	reverse endothelial dysfunction	Effective	[278]
Oxypurinol	RCT	patients with HF	no clinical improvements	Non-effective	[279]