Hardy09

Hi Mike,

A couple of points. The study showed NO link between taking multi-vitamins and GETTING prostate cancer. What it showed was a link between taking too much, that is MORE than the one-a-day recommended dosage for multi-vitamins, when you already have prostate cancer, and the cancer becoming more deadly (associated with a raised risk of dying from the disease). This was particularly true of men with a family history of prostate cancer. The authors found no increase in the risk of early prostate tumors among heavy vitamin users. They also found no heightened risk among men who took only one multivitamin a day. If doctors followed 10,000 men for 10 years, there would be about 30 extra cases of advanced prostate cancer and 7 or 8 extra cases of fatal prostate cancer associated with heavy multivitamin use. But the study was not designed to prove that vitamins affect cancer risk. To prove that, scientists would have to randomly assign half of patients to take supplements and half of them to follow some other regimen.

This newest study involves men who voluntarily took vitamins, and those most at risk _ perhaps because they had a family history of the disease _ may have been more likely to take the pills. That I think is the problem, as the most at risk would be the most likely to get advanced cancer that kills. Thus the study only shows an association, not a cause and effect result.

Consider, for example, that older people have a higher rate of mortality than younger people. Older people also take more supplements than younger people. Note also, sick people have a higher mortality rate than healthy people, and sick people also have a higher rate of taking supplements. In neither case can we say that supplements CAUSE the higher mortality rates.

What really interested me was that taking Selenium with multi-vitamins was associated with increased risk of dying from the disease.

The Nutritional Prevention of Cancer Trial, published in 1996, included 1,312 men and women who had skin cancer. Men who took selenium to prevent nonmelanoma skin cancer received no benefit from selenium in preventing skin cancer. However, men who had taken selenium for 6½ years had approximately 60 percent fewer new cases of prostate cancer than men who took the placebo. In 2002, study data showed that men who took selenium for more than 7½ years had about 52 percent fewer new cases of prostate cancer than men who took the placebo.

In a 1998 study of 29,133 male smokers in Finland, men who took vitamin E to prevent lung cancer had 32 percent fewer new cases of prostate cancer than men who took the placebo.

SELECT stands for the Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial, an on-going clinical trial to see if one or both of these dietary supplements prevent prostate cancer. I understand that a study (don't know if it is the SELECT one), will report next month on the use of selenium and vitamin E to prevent prostate cancer.

I decided years ago that if I was going to take individual supplements I would not also take multi-vitamins. I take many individual supplements, but not a multi-vitamin. As I have a family history of prostate cancer, and a high-PSA count, I take Selenium and Vitamin E, for example.