Women who took multivitamins for years did not
lower their risk of cancer, heart attack, stroke or premature death from any
cause, researchers reported on Monday.
The large study was the latest to indicate that various vitamin
supplements do not prevent common chronic diseases even as consumers spend
billions of dollars on these popular products that line supermarket and drug
store shelves.
"Essentially, there is no effect. And with such a large and diverse
sample size, this is a pretty definitive statement that they are not harming
anybody but they are not benefiting them either in terms of certain chronic
disease risks," Marian Neuhouser of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
in Seattle said in a telephone interview.
Her team's study of 162,000 women, published in the Archives of Internal
Medicine, was the largest of its kind to assess the value of taking
multivitamins, although it involved no men.
The researchers followed the women, all past menopause, for eight years.
About 42 percent took vitamins daily.
All the women had basically identical rates of breast, colorectal, lung,
ovarian and other types of cancer, cardiovascular disease such as heart attack
and stroke, and death from all causes, they found.
The researchers noted that Americans spend more than $20 billion annually
on dietary supplements, a third of it on multivitamins. Many people take vitamin
and mineral supplements to guard against chronic diseases or ward off a colds or
flu.
Neuhouser advised consumers to eat a proper diet with enough fruit and
vegetables to get proper nutrition.
"If people think that they're getting all of their essential nutrients
through a vitamin pill, it just isn't true. There's nothing better than the
actual foods," she said.
Andrew Shao of the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a dietary
supplement industry group, said regardless of this study a majority of people
could benefit from a multivitamin because so many are not getting enough
essential nutrients.
Shao said by e-mail: "Multivitamins, like all other dietary supplements,
are meant to be used as part of an overall healthy lifestyle; they are not
intended to be magic bullets that will assure the prevention of chronic
diseases, like cancer."
Many companies make multivitamins including Bayer with its One A Day and
Wyeth with Centrum vitamins.
In October the U.S. National Cancer Institute stopped a study of 35,000
men designed to see whether taking selenium and vitamin E supplements prevent
prostate cancer after slightly more cases of prostate cancer appeared in men
taking only vitamin E and slightly more cases of diabetes in men taking
selenium.
In November, a study involving 14,641 male U.S. doctors found that taking
vitamin E or vitamin C supplements did not cut their risk for cancer or
cardiovascular disease.
(Editing by Maggie Fox and David Wiessler) Keywords: VITAMINS CANCER/
(will.dunham@reuters.com; +1 202 898 8300)
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