IN THIS ISSUE

Sometimes if you wait long enough the evidence arrives on your doorstep. One pending topic for discussion at our journal club was whether folate helped to reduce cardiovascular disease by lowering homocysteine. There was some good physiological and observational evidence to support the idea, and some small trials. This issue we have reports from 2 large randomised trials—one from Norway and one from North America—that provide a pretty clear answer: “no.” Despite lowering homocysteine, both trials showed no impact of folic acid and gave confidence intervals tight enough to rule out an important effect. So the one untested element of the “polypill” can now be dropped. Several of the trials in this issue question current therapies: …