does vitamin c improve endothelial function in patients with kawasaki disease?

background: improvement of endothelial dysfunction could prevent or delay the occurrence of the atherosclerosis process in patients with kawasaki disease (kd). it is suggested that vitamin c could improve endothelial dysfunction. in this study, we investigated whether administration of vitamin c as a water-soluble antioxidant could be effective in this regard among patients with kd. materials and methods: in this case control analytic-experimental study, children aged 3-18 years with kd, and a group of healthy children evaluated. vitamin c (250 mg/daily) administrated for the two studied groups for 1 month. endothelial function evaluated by flowmediated dilatation (fmd) and intima-media thickness (imt) measurement using vascular doppler ultrasonography, before and after trial. results: in this study, 16 patients with kd and 19 normal children were studied. at baseline mean of imt and fmd was not different in the two studied groups ( p > 0.05). after vitamin c administration imt decreased significantly in two studied groups (from 27.06 ± 6.27 to 21.56 ± 3.77 in kd group and from 27.66 ± 5.66 to 23.33 ± 3.66 in control group [ p < 0.05]). fmd increased in two studied groups, but the difference was significant in the control group (from 6.84 ± 2.51 to 7.03 ± 2.87 in kd group and from 6.53 ± 2.36 to 7.82 ± 2.14 in the control group). conclusion: vitamin c might improve the endothelial function of patients with kd.