Heart failure patients have a greater risk of inflammation and death if they do not get enough vitamin C. Those are the findings of a new study presented this week at the American Heart Association conference in Orlando.

Researchers at the University of Ulsan in Korea found that those heart patients with inadequate vitamin C had almost twice the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease than those who had a greater intake of the vitamin.

The study is the first to show worse heart failure outcomes among men and women with low vitamin C intake. "We found that adequate intake of vitamin C was associated with longer survival in patients with heart failure," commented one of the study's authors.