America's favorite dietary supplements, multivitamins, modestly lowered the risk for cancer in healthy male doctors who took them for more than a decade, the first large study to test these pills has found. The result is a surprise because many studies of individual vitamins have found they don't help prevent chronic diseases and some have even caused problems.
In the new study, multivitamins cut the chance of developing cancer by 8 percent. That is less effective than a good diet, exercise and not smoking, each of which can lower cancer risk by 20 percent to 30 percent, cancer experts say. Nearly 15,000 male doctors who were 50 or older and free of cancer when the study started were given monthly packets of Centrum Silver or fake multivitamins without knowing which type they received.
After about 11 years, there were 2,669 new cancers, and some people had cancer more than once. For every 1,000 men per year in the study, there were 17 cancers among multivitamin users and more than 18 among those taking the placebo pills. That worked out to an 8 percent lower risk of developing cancer in the vitamin group. Multivitamins made no difference in the risk of developing prostate cancer, which accounted for half of all cases. They lowered the risk of other cancers collectively by about 12 percent. (AP/HuffPo)