Vitamins Don’t Lower Prostate Cancer Risk, Studies Conclude
Reported December 10, 2008
It’s time to forget about the saying “a vitamin a day keeps cancer away,” as more and more cancer studies show that vitamins are no good in preventing cancer. Two such studies appearing in December 9 Early Release issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) come to underline the idea, saying that vitamins C and E do not appear to reduce the risk of prostate cancer or total cancer in men.
It is a known fact that many people take vitamins in the hopes of preventing chronic diseases such as cancer. Vitamins E and C are among the most common individual supplements, J. Michael Gaziano, MD, MPH, from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School In Boston, Massachusetts and colleagues from the Physicians’ Health Study II wrote in one of the studies, which involved over 14,000 males doctors age 50 or more who were assigned to take vitamin C, vitamin E, both of them or placebos. The participants were followed for a period of eight years on average. During the trial, almost 2,000 men developed prostate cancer, 1000 of them being prostate cancers.
The second study led by Dr. Scott Lippman, from the University of Texas, involved 35,533 men from America, Canada and Puerto Rico who were given either selenium, vitamin E, both or a placebo for between four and seven years. The trial was stopped ahead of its original 12-year deadline because of a lack of any noticeable benefit. The researchers found there were no statistically significant differences in the numbers of men who developed prostate cancer in the four groups. In all cases, the proportion of men developing prostate cancer over a five-year period was 4 to 5 percent. The researchers said their study “has definitely demonstrated that selenium, vitamin E or selenium plus vitamin E did not prevent prostate cancer in the generally healthy, heterogeneous population of men in (the trial).”
The news couldn’t be worse, keeping in mind the recurrence of prostate cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, one in six men will get prostate cancer in his lifetime, and one in thirty-five will die of the disease. The organization estimates that 28,660 US men will die of prostate cancer in 2008, accounting for roughly 10 percent of all cancer-related deaths in men.
These studies are not the first to show the inefficiency of vitamins in preventing cancers. At the beginning of November, a study by researchers at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital of Harvard Medical School concluded that taking folic acid and other B vitamins on regular basis doesn’t prevent breast cancer or cancer in general.
An earlier study (of a much smaller group) conducted on the effect of selenium supplementation on the recurrence of skin cancers did not demonstrate a reduced rate of recurrence of skin cancers, but did show a reduced occurrence of total cancers.
Another study showed that vitamin D supplements, taken at a dose of 400 international units per day, may not help prevent breast cancer in women after menopause.
What’s the message to take home from all of these studies? You can take all the vitamins in world, but this won’t help you prevent chronic disease if you lack a healthy lifestyle. “Supplements don’t substitute for a healthy diet and some studies have shown that they may actually increase the risk of cancer,” Dr. Jodie Moffat, of the charity Cancer Research UK told BBC News.
Source : eFluxMedia
