Antioxidants did not appear to increase risk for melanoma

Results from VITAL, a population-based prospective study, showed that antioxidants were not associated with an increased risk for melanoma.

VITAL was conducted in response to results from SUVIMAX, a recent randomized trial of antioxidants for cancer prevention that found that daily supplementation with nutritionally appropriate doses of vitamins C and E, beta carotene, selenium and zinc appeared to increase the risk of melanoma in women fourfold.

Researchers recruited 69,671 men and women from October 2000 to December 2002 into the VITAL trial. Participants completed a survey about intake during the previous 10 years and lifetime use after age 21 of vitamin C, vitamin E, beta carotene, selenium and zinc. Two-thirds of participants were either current or former users of multivitamins.

No exposure variable was associated with an increased risk for melanoma. The researchers said that at the highest doses of multivitamins, there was no increased risk of melanoma for men (RR=1.09; 95% CI, 0.83-1.43) or women (RR=1.14; 95% CI, 0.78-1.66).

Even in the highest dose category for beta carotene, 6,000 mcg per day taken seven days per week for five years, and selenium, 100 mcg per day taken seven days per week for five years, no increased risk for disease was found.

The researchers acknowledge that there are some limitations to this study — they did not have detailed information on some known melanoma risk factors such sunlight exposure during childhood.

“However, adjusting for the major melanoma risk factors including age, sex, education, family history of melanoma, color of hair between ages 10 and 20, sensitivity to sun, the number of sunburns before age 20 and history of freckles and moles did not alter the risks in the multivariate model,” they wrote.

Asagari MM. Arch Dermatol. 2009;145:879-882.