Wednesday November 5, 2008 - Vitamin B supplements
including folate, vitamin B6 and vitamin B 12 may not help prevent cancer,
according to a new study led by Dr. Shumin Zhang and colleagues at Brigham and
Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
The study published in the
Journal of the American Medical Association followed 5,442 female
health professionals age 63 on average in the United States for 7.5 years and
found taking vitamin B supplements did not make any difference in cancer risk
or death risk from cancer.
The women had
cardiovascular disease or risk factors like high blood pressure or high
cholesterol levels.
The researchers did find however that among women aged 65
and older, those taking the daily B vitamins had a 25 percent reduced risk of
developing any type of cancer and a 38 percent reduced risk of developing
breast cancer.
Another study led by Zhang and colleagues and published
in May 2008 in the
American Journal of
Epidemiology suggests that taking multivitamin supplements may not help protect
against breast cancer.
The study showed that those who took multivitamins in the
past or currently had almost the same risk of breast cancer.
The study followed 37,920 women aged 45 or older for 10
years.
During the follow-up, 1,171 cases
of invasive breast cancer were recorded.
However, taking vitamins was inversely associated with
risk breast cancer among women consuming more than 10 grams of alcohol per day
and with risk of es.trogenreceptor negativepro.gesterone receptornegative
breast cancer, but not significantly.
Zhang and team also found that "Multivitamin use was
nonsignificantly associated with a reduced risk of developing < or =2-cm
breast tumors but an increased risk of >2-cm tumors."
But over all, there was generally no association between
vitamin supplements and breast cancer risk.
Some early studies suggest that dietary intake of B
vitamins or other vitamins may help reduce risk of cancer, but B vitamins pills
and supplements may increase the risk.
Folate is found in many foods including bananas, oranges,
leafy green vegetables, asparagus, broccoli, and many sorts of beans and peas,
and fortified cereals.
Vitamin B6 is
found in fortified cereal, bananas, salmon, turkey, chicken, potato, spinach
and vitamin b 12 is found in clams, mussels, crab, salmon, and beef, to name a
few.
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