Daily multivitamin shown to help ward off cancer in men

Swallowing a daily multivitamin can reduce the risk of cancer by at least eight percent in middle-aged and older men and appears to have no dangerous side-effects, according to the first large-scale, randomized study on the subject.

The protective effect of the daily pill was described as modest by the trial investigators who emphasized that the primary use of vitamins was to prevent nutritional deficiencies. The findings were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and presented on Wednesday at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Anaheim, California.

This is indeed a landmark study, said Cory Abate-Shen, a professor of urological oncology at Columbia University Medical Center who was not involved in the trial. It suggests that a balanced multivitamin approach is probably more beneficial than increasing to high levels any one vitamin.

About half of U.S. adults take at least one daily dietary supplement - the most popular being a multivitamin, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The U.S. Physicians Health Study II included nearly 50,000 male doctors aged 50 and older and spanned more than 10 years. Participants were randomly assigned to a multivitamin - Pfizer Inc's Centrum Silver - or a placebo. The research was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.

Several previous studies, many relying on self-reported use of specific vitamins or supplements, have generated mixed results in terms of cancer outcomes.

There have been some other trials that have tested combinations, often at high doses, of certain vitamins and minerals, said Dr. Howard Sesso, one of the study's authors and an associate epidemiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Our trial took a very commonly used multivitamin that has basically low levels of all the different essential vitamins and minerals.

The findings suggest that the biggest health benefit may come from a broad combination of dietary supplements, he said.

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