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Multivitamins show promise in cancer prevention in middle-aged men
Daily multivitamin supplementation reduced the risk of total cancer, according to results of the Physicians’ Health Study II.
The Physicians’ Health Study is a large-scale, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial that involved 14,641 U.S. physicians. Researchers involved with the study are testing the long-term effects of a common multivitamin in the prevention of chronic disease.
J. Michael Gaziano, MD, MPH, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues chose total cancer — excluding nonmelanoma skin cancer — as the primary endpoint for this study. Secondary endpoints included prostate, colorectal and other site-specific cancers.
At the median follow-up of 11.2 years, 2,669 men had confirmed cancer, including 1,373 cases of prostate cancer and 210 cases of colorectal cancer.
The results showed that men who took a daily multivitamin had a statistically significant reduction in the incidence of total cancer. Researchers reported 17 events per 1,000 person-years among members of the multivitamin group vs. 18.3 events per 1,000 person-years among members of the placebo group (HR, 0.92; 95% CI, 0.86-0.998. Taking a multivitamin did not have a significant effect on prostate cancer, colorectal cancer or other site-specific cancers. Further, there was no difference in the risk of cancer mortality.
Daily multivitamin use was linked to a decrease in total cancer among 1,312 men with a baseline cancer history (HR, 0.73;95% CI, 0.56-0.96).
“In this large-scale randomized trial of 14,641 middle-aged and older men, a daily multivitamin supplement significantly but modestly reduced the risk of total cancer during a mean of 11 years of treatment and follow-up,” the authors wrote. “Although the main reason to take multivitamins is to prevent nutritional deficiency, these data provide support for the potential use of multivitamin supplements in the prevention of cancer in middle-aged and older men.”
Perspective
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Another one of those maddening epidemiological studies without upfront rationale or recognizable pathophysiologic logic. The very small differences may not reflect vitamin effects, per se, but involve differing co-behaviors of the study groups. For instance, are health-conscious vitamin users less likely to smoke, engage in oral sex, be obese, etc? Personally, I will save pharmacy costs by continuing to eat a couple of wholesome meals each day and ski as long as my legs allow.
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