Vitamin E, selenium fail to prevent prostate cancer

Vitamin E and selenium supplements, either taken independently or together, do not reduce a man's chances of developing prostate cancer, and may even heighten his risks, a federally funded study has found.

A seven-year trial involving more than 35,000 subjects and conducted at 400 sites around the United States was suspended this month, after researchers began tallying the effects and found, at best, no benefit and at worst, signs of trouble. Participants were told to stop taking their supplements and assured that their health would be monitored for roughly the next three years.

Researchers found a slightly elevated risk of prostate cancer in subjects taking only Vitamin E and a small increased risk of developing diabetes in men taking only selenium. The National Institutes of Health, which funded the study, cautioned that those small effects may have been due to chance. As they comb the evidence, the researchers should learn more about the relationship.

The preliminary results of what is known as the SELECT trial are a major disappointment to those who had hoped that an inexpensive, widely available dietary supplement might prove powerful in the prevention of cancer. Previous studies had suggested that selenium and Vitamin E, taken alone or together, might decrease the risk of developing prostate cancer by 60% and 30%, respectively.

But the latest study is not the first trial of supplements' cancer-prevention properties to end in disappointment: Studies completed in the 1990s found that beta-carotene supplementation failed to prevent lung cancer, and in fact appeared to increase the odds that male smokers would develop the disease.

In other clinical trials, researchers are exploring whether lycopene, a plant-based substance, might drive down the risk of prostate cancer for men. Drugs being studied as possible prostate cancer preventives include the anabolic steroid toremifene, the enlarged-prostate treatment dutasteride, and finasteride, which is widely prescribed for enlarged prostate and hair loss.

--Melissa Healy

Comments

[df44az]

Here we go again giving Vitamin E a bad name ,no one even mentions what type of vitamin E they are using.Is the DL which is synthectic one or are they using the natural vitamin E. Any thing synthectic the body rejects 2/3rds of it and the rest is like eating peanuts.Untill they exemplify the product they are using, to me it is fraudulent testing ,no truth to it at all, only pushing there own agenda the natural supplementation is only ludicrous,and useless.

[Andrew]

Was this study funded by pharmaceutical companies? These "findings" are garbage, plain and simple. I am sick and tired of this anti-supplement, anti-natural products nonsense. I guess our only options are dangerous, artificial pharmaceutical drugs, the same drugs that kill hundreds of thousands of people every year. Give me a break...

[Danny G Ferguson]

Ok, this is my problem, Why were they spending so money on something that they knew didn't work. Why not just a little. Maybe 120000, which would be the amount you would pay one person.

[aabde3]

Dear df44az: please call the National Cancer Institute's Cancer Information Service at 1-800-4-CANCER (1-800-422-6237), if you want the "exemplification" of the product they are using. The number for callers with TTY equipment is 1-800-332-8615. If you live in Canada, please call the Canadian Cancer Society's Cancer Information Service at 1-888-939-3333.

and I assure you, no real health science researcher is as fraudulent as some person who will deny the validity of experimental results conducted "over 35,000 men, from a variety of ethnic groups, including 14% African American, 5% Hispanic, 1% Hispanic African American, and 1% Asian, from over 400 Study Sites in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Canada," simply based on an unsubstantiated claim that "any thing synthectic the body rejects 2/3rds of it and the rest is like eating peanuts."

[cg]

You are right df44az. They did use artificial dl vitamin E. They wouldn't consider using natural gamma E. It would reduce the prescription med payoffs.
see: http://www.cancer.gov/newscenter/pressreleases/SELECTQandA

[Doc Ed]

The mean culprit for prostate cancer is the hormonal imbalance that comes as well from higher endogenous estrogen production in older men as from the excessive presence in food of phyto-estrogens and additives, preservatives and pesticides with estrogen receptor activating properties.

Press releases toothing the conclusion of the study say nothing about the type of vitamin E used, about the form of selenium and the dosages.
We dismiss the conclusion of this study as irrelevant as long as we are not informed about the above.
Vitamin E and selenium are potent anti-oxidants and proven by numerous other studies effective in reducing the occurrence of several cancers, prostate cancer included.

[andy]

This study demonstrates the intellectual bankruptcy and moral corruption of medicine.

The study was ended early due to STATISTICALLY INSIGNIFICANT increases in apparent risk, and then proclaimed to show that vitamin E and selenium were not beneficial.

That conclusion can not legitimately be drawn without carrying the study through to completion, as designed.

The comments about possible risk are also inappropriate - either the risk rises to the preset level of statistical significance that was proposed to be used to see if the supplements were beneficial, or there is no demonstrated risk.