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(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 ≥150µg/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% 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% rose during the assessment period with increasing dietary VK intake. Fifty percent of patients from the intervention group versus 19% 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.”
