The comment of Blüher et al. (1) highlights the fact that their study (2) and our study (3) deal with two different situations. Our study (3) uses vitamin C as a surrogate of a healthy lifestyle, while the study of Ristow et al. (2) uses a pharmacological tool to dissect pathophysiological mechanisms. Future studies will have to determine whether there is a dose-dependent effect of the potential negative actions of antioxidants or whether adverse actions of antioxidants depend on a certain threshold.

No potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.

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