TUESDAY, June 11, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Increasing vitamin K (VK) intake through dietary strategies improves the anticoagulation stability of warfarin-treated patients, according to a study presented during Nutrition 2019, the annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition, held from June 8 to 11 in Baltimore.
Guylaine Ferland, Ph.D., from the University of Montreal, and colleagues conducted a 24-week study to examine the impact of increasing dietary VK intake by ≥150 µg/day on anticoagulation stability among 49 warfarin patients with a history of international normalized ratio instability. Participants were randomly assigned to either the intervention group — who received dietary counseling to increase their VK intake through specific food choices, recipes, and cooking strategies — or the control group, who received general dietary information.
The researchers found that the mean percent time in the therapeutic range (percent TTR) >70 percent was 67.7 ± 3.4 and 61.4 ± 3.5 for the intervention and control groups, respectively (nonsignificant). The proportion of patients with percent TTR >70 percent rose during the assessment period with increasing dietary VK intake. Fifty percent of patients from the intervention group versus 19 percent from the control group met the study criteria.
“I think all warfarin-treated patients would benefit from increasing their daily vitamin K intake,” Ferland said in a statement. “That said, given the direct interaction between dietary vitamin K and the action of the drug, it is important that (higher) daily vitamin K intakes be as consistent as possible.”
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