Posted on 07/06/2005 2:07:19 PM PDT by neverdem
Study Discounts Protection Against Cancer in Women
Neither low-dose aspirin nor Vitamin E supplements prevent cancer in women, and Vitamin E also does little or nothing to prevent heart disease in them, according to results of a large and authoritative study released yesterday.
The findings from the nearly 40,000-person Women's Health Study add to the growing evidence that Vitamin E pills have no health benefit, but they run counter to the rising tide in favor of wider use of aspirin to prevent disease.
The study hinted that the two compounds may offer some protection against disease in some women -- results that in the case of Vitamin E were already being touted by "dietary supplement" advocates. It is also possible that a higher dose of aspirin has a benefit that was not detected with the low dose used in the clinical trial. That is still worth exploring, the researchers said.
For the moment, though, they advise against routine use of either substance by healthy women.
"When you look at the total package, I would not recommend that somebody take Vitamin E supplements for the purpose of reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease or cancer," said Julie E. Buring, an epidemiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston who headed the study.
Nancy R. Cook, a collaborator who is also at Brigham and Women's, said: "The best thing for prevention is to follow a healthy lifestyle, eat a healthy diet, exercise and avoid smoking. But low-dose aspirin is not effective in reducing cancer incidence. We can lay that to rest."
The Women's Health Study began in the early 1990s with two goals that transcended questions about aspirin and Vitamin E.
It sought to test in women several disease-prevention strategies that had been tried in men, as extrapolating results from one sex...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
ping
A damned shame. It's such a drag to have to eat nothing but rabbit food.
This is the second article I've read recently discouraging people from taking vitamin E. If this continued bashing doesn't produce the desired effect, I imagine someone will soon move to make it illegal.
New Vitamin E Study Found 24% Reduction in Cardiovascular Death in Healthy Women and Older Women Experienced Even Greater Benefit-Women's Health Study Concludes Vitamin E Safe
PR Newswire
07-06-05
CARSON, Calif., July 5, 2005 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Is vitamin E beneficial to human health? The Women's Health Study (WHS), published in the July 6th issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), found 600IU vitamin E is safe and significantly reduces the risk of cardiovascular death in healthy women. Conducted from 1992-2004 on 39,876 healthy women over the age of 45, the Women's Health Study found a "significant 24% reduction" in cardiovascular death in participants taking vitamin E. The study also "observed no significant effect of vitamin E on total mortality."
"The good news coming out of the Women's Health Study is that healthy women receive heart health benefits from taking vitamin E, and older women may reap even greater benefit. In women 65 and older, who never took estrogen and were on E, the study found an even greater reduction in the cardiovascular death rate. Had all these women not taken estrogen, one might surmise that the reduction in cardiovascular events among elderly women would have been even larger," commented Dr. Ishwarlal Jialal, M.D., Ph.D., Robert E. Stowell Endowed Chair in Experimental Pathology, Director of the Laboratory for Atherosclerosis and Metabolic Research and Professor of Internal Medicine and Pathology at UC Davis School of Medicine.
The study's objective was to test whether vitamin E supplementation decreases the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer among healthy women. Women participating in the study randomly received 600IU natural source vitamin E or placebo every other day and 100 mg aspirin or placebo every other day. Strikingly, women over the age of 65 in the vitamin E group experienced a 26% overall reduction in major cardiovascular events, due to a 34% reduction in heart attack and a 49% reduction in cardiovascular death. However, researchers noted the overall reduction in cardiovascular deaths among all participants was possibly due to chance.
"A weakness of this study like previous anti-oxidant trials is the failure to report an objective assessment of compliance by measuring vitamin E levels in the blood. Vitamin E was given on alternate days with a compliance rate of 72% in the vitamin E group and an 11% drop-in rate in the placebo group," added Dr. Jialal.
The study elaborates "the single largest contribution to the reduction in cardiovascular deaths was fewer sudden deaths among women on vitamin E." Still the WHS researchers appear to downplay these "significant" findings by concluding vitamin E supplementation offers no harm or benefit. Moreover, they note their research indicates healthy women should not take it for the prevention of cardiovascular disease or cancer. Yet, the researchers acknowledged their findings of a decreased risk in cardiovascular death in participants as well as the significant benefit to women over age 65 contradict the study's overall findings and "should be explored further."
The Women's Health Study is the largest and longest randomized trial of vitamin E to date on healthy people. It addition to reducing the risk of heart disease, the study concluded vitamin E is safe and did not increase the risk of death in healthy women, refuting recent findings in the Miller meta- analysis (Miller, ER, Ann. Intern. Med. 2005), which suggested the contrary.
The Women's Health Study observed that while the Miller meta-analysis "raised the question of possible adverse effects on total mortality with high doses," it is important to recognize that the Miller trial was conducted on gravely ill participants "with cardiovascular risk factors and/or CVD, or at high risk for cancer." Therefore, one cannot apply its findings to the general healthy population. In contrast, the Women's Health Study conducted on nearly 40,000 healthy women with no risk factors found 600IU of vitamin E every other day "did not increase total mortality in healthy women."
The Women's Health Study was a randomized trial, considered more clinically sound than a meta-analysis. The Miller meta-analysis relied upon published summary statistics from 19 previously conducted trials, considered to be a distinctly inferior methodology when conducting a meta-analysis, making the results of the Miller study inconclusive at best. More research should be conducted on vitamin E in healthy people to better understand the scope of this nutrient's benefit.
Like to know if the drug companies had any involvement with this study.
My thoughts exactly !
I'd like to know that myself, especially considering that there have been plenty of studies regarding aspirin's benefits against both heart disease and some types of cancer.
July 8, 2005
Dear Admin Moderator,
Re:
Your posting privilege has been suspended until 2005-07-13 21:56:18
Reason:
You have a 7 day suspension. You know the posting rules and if you continue
to violate them, you will be banned.
A few days before the suspension, after I posted the article about the
correct way to remove ticks, which was posted under the topic, "News/Current
Events" in "News/Activism", just like "Teleportation: Express Lane Space
Travel" posted by demlosers, I received FReepmail from the admin moderator
to the effect that all articles that are intended for my health and science
ping list should be posted to chat, and that I needed to post an even
balance of excerpted and unexcerpted articles, or something to that effect,
because I was posting too many articles that were excerpted.
PatrickHenry, who has an evolution ping list, posts his evolution articles
in "News/Activism", and quidnunc's articles are almost always excerpted. The
one exeption for quidnunc that I saw was an article from NewsMax.
I suspect the suspension was for posting an article on vitamin E and aspirin
for the prevention of cancer in the front page news section. It was on the
front page of the Washington Post, and it was mentioned on PBS' "The News
Hour" on television, as well as the inferior Associated Press' version which
was on the websites of most news organizations, except CNN which linked to a
worse version at Time.com. The story was so newsworthy that the Journal of
the American News Association made the entire aspirin portion of the story
available for free, which is not common, not just the usual abstract for
non-subscribers.
This randomized, double blind study is one of the largest of its kind,
almost 40,000 women studied over a ten year period. It was funded by
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and the National Cancer Institute,
i.e. taxpayers.
Considering that many FReepers are health conscious, and that many of them
no longer access the main stream media, I was posting it for their benefit.
My intent was to link the Washington Post story from a different chat
thread, not ping the health and science list directly, which it wasn't. I
can't post stories like this to chat.
Accordingly, I will no longer be posting any articles about medicine or
health.
Adios, neverdem
P.S. The link in comment# 1 gives the source of the funding.
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list. If I see interesting articles about health and medicine, I may ping you to the thread or link them directly. I will still post science related articles.
Seeing all the useless chit-chat that is posted here, I'm doubly sorry that you won't be posting the health and medicine information. I really looked forward to those. Perhaps you can still ping us privately to those with a link? I simply don't understand the reasoning behind your suspension at all. I'm not dense, so perhaps someone could help me out?
Well, expletive!
I'm one of the FReepers who do depend on the posters here on FR to keep me up to date on all those articles I'd miss in my own reading (I only "Google News" for stem cell articles.
I hope this was a mistake!
ahhhhhhhhhhh, I just figured you were on va-cay or something...
geez, I better stop posting my Kerry picture 'caption this' posts to 'Front page News'....
ping me with the good stuff...
Neverdem I really hope this problem can be sorted out. I have enjoyed the ping list and the articles. The threads have been very informative.
I hope you change your mind :(
If you enter the correct URL, then the posting program here at FR recognizes what sources that they want excerpted.
You should be safe posting them in extended news. Front page news is worrisome. Breaking news is almost sacrosanct, depending on the article. Mad cow disease may be OK, but I haven't figured out their rhyme or reason.
I can report that TOO MUCH Vitamin E is not good. Years back, I had terrible dry skin so I decided to take megadoses of Vitamin E. I took WAY too much- made me feel like my skin was burning and it was super sensitive.
Even now, I am highly sensitive to ANY Vitamin E- but try to avoid it! Its even in shampoo, soap, hand lotion, some juices and toilet paper!
So telling people not to TAKE it in pill form is one thing- how about the fact that it's in nearly everything you use on your body? Don't you absorb that?
If you really want the attention of the admin mod, send your missive via the "Report Abuse" function. Regular comments to threads are usually ignored.
Yes, Vitamin E can be absorbed through the skin.
I have a bottle of good multivitamins, but I only take them on days when I exercise - not every day. I think if you eat a varied diet where most of your calories are healthy, whole, unprocessed foods, primarily meat and veggies, that you cook yourself, then you'll have a hard time being deficient in anything... assuming you are getting enough calories.
I personally wouldn't take megadoses of anything... if a little is good, a lot isn't necessarily better!
How much were you taking????
Hey Neverdem,
I still want to be on any ping list you are doing, I think your information is excellent and I don't mind excerpted articles at all. I missed you this past week, it being summer, I just figured you were on vacation. You are performing a great service for a lot of people.
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