Study: vitamin raises cancer risk

Be careful about your vitamin dosage. A new report suggests that, instead of preventing prostate cancer, taking Vitamin E might raise a man's risk.

This came as a surprise because lab experiments, and even a prior study in Finland, suggested that taking Vitamin E might help prevent prostate cancer. But it really didn't. And these results came out at the same time as a large study of women showed taking supplements increased the risk of dying.

One very large study, begun almost ten years ago, tested Vitamin E against a placebo to see if it could prevent prostate cancer.

Dr. James Marshall said, "And I'm sure there were people who said you're putting these people who are getting placebo at risk. It turns out they were at risk - lower risk! It's a complete surprise and I don't think we understand why that is."

Dr. Marshall is senior vice president of Roswell Park and chairman of the department of cancer prevention. He points out that the dose of Vitamin E used in the study was much higher than the nutritional recommended intake.

"We tend to assume that if taking a little bit of something is good, taking a bucketful of it is better, and that's not necessarily true," said Dr. Marshall.

The risk was 17 percent higher for men who took Vitamin E. Another big blow to our belief in supplements came from a study of almost 40,000 post-menopausal women in Iowa - it found that those who regularly took supplements, including multivitamins, B6, folic acid, iron, magnesium, zinc and copper had a significantly greater risk of dying than those who did not take them. Only calcium supplements and Vitamin D were associated with a lower risk. So, probably, most of us get all the vitamins we can use from food.

Dr. Marshall said, "The American people and most western people are best nourished and completely nourished of people in the world, and whether we can protect them any more by adding additional nutrients to their diet - the answer to that appears to be negative."

We're still looking for ways to prevent cancer and lengthen life, but taking vitamin supplements isn't the answer. Talk to your doctor about the supplements you're taking. You probably don't need them, but if you do, your doctor can tell you that. Based on these new reports, they might be harmful.