For patients at high risk of Alzheimer’s disease, taking a combination of vitamins E and C plus ibuprofen significantly reduces their risk, results of a longitudinal study suggest.

Specifically, the combination seems to benefit people who carry a variant of the gene for apolipoprotein, APOE-4, which is known to put them at high risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease.

“We found that for people at low risk, taking vitamin C and E alone is sufficient to further reduce their risk,” Dr. Majid Fotuhi told Reuters Health. “But for those with (APOE-4), the combination exerts a synergistic benefit.”

Fotuhi, from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and his associates followed nearly 5000 elderly residents of Cache County in Utah for 8 years, taking into account their regular consumption of vitamins C and E, and ibuprofen.

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A new study suggests that smokers who develop preeclampsia during pregnancy are at particular risk of suffering the complications associated with the disorder — including preterm delivery, low birth weight and stillbirth.

The findings may not sound surprising. But they actually present something of a paradox, as past studies have linked smoking to a reduced risk of developing preeclampsia in the first place.

Preeclampsia is a syndrome marked by a sudden increase in blood pressure after the 20th week of pregnancy and a buildup of protein in the urine due to stress on the kidneys. Most women with preeclampsia deliver a healthy baby, but the condition can develop into a life-threatening condition called eclampsia, which can cause seizures or coma.

Preeclampsia can also slow the growth of the fetus and increase the risks of preterm birth, placental abruption — where the placenta separates from the uterine wall before delivery of the newborn, potentially leading to heavy bleeding that can be life-threatening to mother and child.

A number of studies have found that pregnant smokers are less likely than non-smokers to develop preeclampsia, for reasons that are not yet clear.

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