Too Many Vitamins May Increase Risk Of Prostate Cancer Death, Study Finds

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WASHINGTON — Taking too many vitamins may increase men’s risk of dying from prostate cancer.

A study, published yesterday, doesn’t settle the issue. But it is the biggest yet to suggest high-dose multivitamins may harm the prostate, and the latest chapter in the confusing quest to tell whether taking various vitamins really helps a variety of conditions.

Government scientists turned to a study tracking the diet and health of almost 300,000 men. About a third reported taking a daily multivitamin, and 5% were heavy users, swallowing the pills more than seven times a week.

Within five years of the study’s start, 10,241 men had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Some 1,476 had advanced cancer; 179 died. Heavy multivitamin users were almost twice as likely to get fatal prostate cancer as men who never took the pills, the study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute concludes.

Here’s the twist: Overall, the researchers found no link between multivitamin use and early-stage prostate cancer. The researchers speculate that perhaps high-dose vitamins had little effect until a tumor appeared, and then could spur its growth.

While similar but smaller studies have suggested a link, too, more rigorous research is needed, the National Cancer Institute scientists caution. 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 in hopes of avoiding their fate.

Still, “the findings lend further credence to the possibility of harm associated with increased use of supplements,” Dr. Christian Gluud of Copenhagen University Hospital and Dr. Goran Bjelakovic of Serbia’s University of Nis wrote in an accompanying editorial.


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