Vitamin E has mixed results in stroke risk

A review found the vitamin increased the risk of suffering a haemorrhagic stroke (where bleeding occurs in the brain) by 22 per cent compared to people not taking it.

The overall risk was small, accounting for one extra haemorrhagic stroke for every 1,250 people taking vitamin E.

Haemorrhagic strokes are the least common type and occur when a weakened blood vessel supplying the brain bursts and causes brain damage.

The review, from experts at Harvard Medical School in Boston in the United States, also found vitamin E could actually cut the risk of the most common type of stroke by 10 per cent.

This type of stroke, ischaemic, accounts for 70 per cent of all cases and happens when a blood clot prevents blood reaching the brain.

Experts found vitamin E could cut the risk, equivalent to one ischaemic stroke prevented per 476 people taking the vitamin.

However, they warned that keeping to a healthy lifestyle and maintaining low blood pressure and low cholesterol have a far bigger effect on cutting the risk of ischaemic stroke than taking vitamin E.

More than 111,000 people have a stroke every year and they are the third biggest cause of death in the UK. Those who survive are frequently left with disability.

The study, published online in the British Medical Journal, included nine studies of almost 1.2 million people on the link between vitamin E and stroke.