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Vitamin K prevents arterial calcification; Warfarin promotes it

[posted on behalf of CRON4healthyfuture]

Interesting paradigm being advanced here. Warfarin calcifies your arteries, Vitamin K can prevent this process. Warfarin lowers the Vitamin K available for participation in gamma-carboxylation of proteins associated with calcium homeostasis. So, Vitamin K is factor that inhibits calcification in living arteries.

The hunt is on for the "SCF", or "Serum Calcification Factor", that promotes this process. What is interesting is that this factor is thought to circulate in the serum, and living arteries have to actively "fight" this factor to prevent being calcified. "Dead" arteries cannot fight the SCF anymore, and so they calcify rapidly.

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http://atvb.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/01.ATV.0000216406.44762.7cv1

http://www.ajhp.org/cgi/content/abstract/62/15/1574

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"Our working hypothesis is that the same SCF initiates calcification of collagen and elastin, and that this SCF arises from sites of normal bone mineralization and, like alkaline phosphatase, is released into general circulation. The SCF does not initiate medial elastin calcification in living arteries, which suggests that vascular cells may prevent this calcification. This hypothesis is supported by the observations that living arteries secrete the calcification inhibitor matrix Gla protein (MGP); that inactivation of MGP with warfarin causes living arteries to calcify; and that addition of MGP to medium containing warfarin prevents this calcification."