E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
courtesy of Dr. Dean Rising
Dr. Dean Rising, 72, of Springfield, Mo., took daily pills for 30 years as part of his participation in two phases of the Physicians' Health Study, which has found that a daily multivitamin cuts men's cancer risk. Rising is shown here with his pill pack in Antarctica. As it turns out, he got the dummy pills, not the multivitamins in the randomized controlled trial.
After years of research showing dietary supplements failed to prevent cancer, a new study of multivitamin use in men has a surprising message: This one worked.
Turns out, a daily dose of Centrum Silver multivitamins reduced the total risk of cancer in study participants by 8 percent, according to gold-standard research that included nearly 15,000 male doctors older than 50 for up to 13 years.
“It does appear that there is a modest reduction in cancer among middle-aged and older men,” said Dr. J. Michael Gaziano, chief of the division of aging at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a researcher at the VA Boston Healthcare System.
The study also found that multivitamin use cut site-specific cancers, except for prostate cancer, by 12 percent, and suggested a 12 percent reduction in deaths caused by cancer, though that figure wasn’t statistically significant.
“Even total mortality went in the right direction,” said Gaziano, whose new data comes from the Physicians Health Study II published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The finding is important in a country where more than half of U.S. adults use dietary supplements, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- and where the most common supplement is a daily multivitamin.
Several recent studies -- including Gaziano’s own work -- have looked at whether taking specific vitamins such as C, E and B12 prevent cancer. They’ve come up empty; a few even found a higher risk of certain illnesses.
The difference, Gaziano said, is that many of those studies were limited in scope and size and they used single supplements at high doses, much higher than a daily vitamin would provide.
By contrast, the new study is the first of its kind.
“The Physicians' Health Study II represents the only large-scale, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial testing the long-term effects of a common multivitamin in the prevention of chronic disease,” the authors write.
Study participants included 14,641 U.S. men, all doctors, who received either a pack of daily supplements, including the Centrum Silver vitamins, or daily dummy pills between July 1997 and June 2011.
The doctors, who were followed for between 10 and 13 years, were excellent patients. They were pretty healthy, with a mean body mass index of 26 -- just barely overweight -- and only 3.6 percent of them smoked. They were also good sports: By the end of the trial, more than two-thirds of the docs were still taking their pills as directed, the study found.
“They are very compliant,” Gaziano said.
Take Dr. Dean Rising, 72, a Springfield, Mo., pediatrician who has participated in both phases of the Physicians' Health Study, two large-scale studies spanning 30 years. He took photos of himself and his daily "vitamins" on seven continents, including a shot a few years ago in Antartica.
"This is the sort of thing where if you don't have people testing these things, you never know the results," explained Rising.
As it turns out, he learned last year that he was enrolled in the placebo arm of the Phase II study, so he never got any vitamins at all. Now, he says, he makes sure to take one every day.
"I think it means you need a variety of different vitamins in your diet," he said of the new results.
Experts agree. The new study suggests that boosting nutrition, even with the modest nudge of a daily vitamin, could have far-reaching health benefits, said Dr. Demetrius Albanes, a senior investigator and expert in nutritional epidemiology with the National Cancer Institute.
“It’s exciting. It’s encouraging,” said Albanes.
But others cautioned that it’s too soon to make sweeping recommendations based on a single study, especially when previous trials have been mixed or have even shown harm, said Susan Gapstur, vice president of the epidemiology research program for the American Cancer Society.
“It’s important to remember that this study, as credible as it is, is still just one trial,” said “Typically we like to see these kinds of findings replicated by other studies, and in other populations, before coming to solid conclusions.”
In addition, the trial only included men who are healthier than the general population, and, of course, it excluded women. Further research would need to conduct a similar test of multivitamin use in women to determine whether that also reduced cancer risk, experts said.
Still, the results of the study could send some older men racing to buy bottles of Centrum Silver, the best-selling multivitamin produced by Pfizer, the drug company that now owns the brand. Gaziano said he picked that multivitamin early on because he thought it was a quality product that would "last over the years."
An estimated 18 million multivitamins and 18 million placebo pills were donated during the course of the trial, said MacKay Jimeson, a Pfizer spokesman who noted that the company is “very pleased” that researchers chose Centrum Silver for the study.
Gaziano said the pills and packaging were the extent of his drug company support.
For his part, Gaziano is pleased not only with the results, but also with finishing a project that occupied 17 years of his life.
“As a long-term chronic disease trialist, it feels very good to be done,” he said. “You just have to be patient. I think that when we’re talking about prevention of cancer, we’re talking about decades.”
Related stories:
- More bad supplement news: Vitamin E may be risky for prostate
- Vitamin D doesn't actually fight off colds, study finds
Leave a Comment:
Multivitamins! Woo hoo!
I have been taking vitamins for the past 4 decades - and no other medication, so I am a strong proponent of vitamins...I started using a product called Mug For Men Skin Care Nutrition which they say is like a multivitamin for the skin and with all the nutrients it's got to work. I hope this cuts my risk of skin cancer.
Centrum is one of the worst "vitamins" on the market in the natural news/organic world sites. But, if YOU SAY NO to those damn "routine" dental and chest xrays and all CT scans and their radioactive contrasts and avoid the fibrotic and DOUBLE STRAND DNA breaks radiation causes in 67% of your DNA within 1mS of ionizing xray exposures and say NO to MRI GADOLINIUM metal injected for the magnet contrast that undergoes transmetallation in the body due to iron, copper and magnesium and releases the toxic Gd3+ gadolinium, you can avoid the skin/kidney and vision/painful bones/muscle pains and the horrific , progressive condition of nephrogenic systemic fibrosis, too. See www.nyas.org Fourth Annual NSF Conference 13 Sept 2010 e briefing/media tab and see Jack Gauldie's slides: If it's in them , we put it there and listen to Panel 1 comment: Radiologists are terrorists.... not my comment... see radiobiology effects of low level ionizing radiation and see www auntminnie com 7 May 2012 Antioxidant Halves DNA Damage and see the book Bioshield and the pill of the same name, www bioshieldpill com and read what even 1 exposure of radiation does to you. Delays healing, causes Radiation Induced Meningiomas, gets to your doublestrand DNA and breaks it, causes somatic and heritable mutations. YES it does, of course, air pollution, fracking/poor water/diet and soil and just about every damn thing nations due for energy and non essential "discoveries" is detrimental to human health. If you think not, read the Reports of Human Radiation Experiments and see for yourself. If you want to know if you've been experimented on see Human Research Inquiry or VAHHS May or Military or call 202 586 8439. I know Mayo clinic has a ton of lab work/data mining on me since childhood and they better turn it over along with all other agencies that mine human data. It's our right to know if we've been part of classified studies and other information. Guess what? You're not getting another blood sample from me nor will there be any future xrays/CT or MRI or any dissolvable pills and electronic "health" transmissions from me. no dvice.com junk. Forget it.
I think all this really shows is that people who care enough about their health to take a multivitamin probably do other things for their health as well. I never cared enough until I got older.
I can't believe people find studies like these so credible. People consume so many different things and are exposed to so many different environments(i.e. smoke filled rooms, asbestos) there is no way to say that the multivitamin is what caused the minute eight percent difference. It could have just come down to chance that eight percent more people in the placebo group developed cancer. I never believe in studies that only use statistical probabilities and no real science to come to there conclusions. The statistical numbers will always vary from study group to study group, real scientific evidence that shows you a difference on the molecular level will give you a much clearer answer.
How do we know that the placebos they were giving them didn't CAUSE cancer?
8%??? Seriously??? If this was a prescription drug, do you think it'd even get out of committee? And to generalize from a healthy, non-smoking, compliant cohort to the general population is certainly not statistically supportable! Keep spending your money, people! Only way I'll get benefit from this is if I'm invested in whoever makes Centrum!
Are these men who ate lots of fruits and vegetables to begin with? Did diet matter at all in the study. Does it imply that getting the synthetic version of a vitamin is better than the natural version? My fear with these kinds of studies is that it makes many people think they can continue to eat the same horrid Western diet and then pop a pill and everything will be fine. Eat real food with real vitamins, not the chemical versions.
I used to work on this study and I can tell you that not all of them were health nuts who got all their servings of fruits and veggies each day. The only common characteristic they all had was that they are medical doctors. During my time with the study I spoke to many participants who never exercised, were overweight, smoked every day, etc.
This is more encouragement from chemical companies to get you to not eat real food so you are chemically dependent on them. Almost every vitamin and mineral you need is available in a natural "food" form. Eat real food, not chemicals.
Well, DUH!
In blind trials, Chromium Picolinate supports Fat Metabolism 1000% over a placebo.
Einstein was a fraud. Yeah but what does Chromium Picolinate do to the rest of your body?? I hear Chromium Polynicotinate is better.
Chromium Polynicotinate is a by-product of cigarettes burning - to say it is better than Chromium Picolinate shows you either know nothing about Chromium and its incarnations or you are just trying to mock me due to your lack of knowledge on the subject.
But dick (aptly named) durbin, the "bought & paid for" prostitute politician from Illinois, said vitamins are bad. dick, go flush yourself and do the world a huge favor.
i hope the researchers asked themselves, "if a man will go to the trouble of taking a multivitamin every day, what other healthy practices is he likely to embrace more so than the vitamin eschewer?
eating cruciferous vegetables? eating low fat? exercising regularly? avoiding tobacco products? the list could be lengthy and impact his susceptibility to cancer. i hope they accounted for this in their study.
You have to mention the BRAND multiple times in your article?? What a shameless promo for an exceedingly expensive bottle of vitamins that funnels Pfizer billions from the pockets of suckers.
It's all based on thought. Have you not read that as a man thinketh so is he. Everything and everyone comes into this world by way of thought. That inconcludes vitamins and babies. In other words, if someone hadn't thought of you and I we wouldn't be in this world to take vitamins which also was thought up.
About two months ago a study showed such vitamins did little or no good in terms of health benefits. So much for these reports which change on a daily basis.. what a waste of time.
They Work, They dont work, They Work, They dont work, They Work, They dont work. They Work, They dont work, They Work, They dont work, They Work, They dont work, They Work, They dont work, They Work, They dont work, They Work, They dont Work, They Work, They dont work, They Work, They dont work, They work, They dont work, They work, They dont work, Dont you people get tired of being used as a Ping Pong Ball?
I wouldn't get too excited over this study. The population is not random, it is well educated, well fed, and for the most part getting the best health care...after all its free for them as a professional courtesy. And after all of the benefits of having a well paying health care job the rate was only cut 8 percent. Okay just what does that mean? Was the control group screened for its propensity for gentic cancers, what kind of cancers are we talking about. Sorry I just don't buy it...however I am sure the vitamin companies dol
Thank you!
First of all the RDA could be considered a minimum wage of nutrition. The amount determined was the amount needed to prevent rickets and scurvy You should aim much higher than the minimum wage. Secondly, Most vitamins are food grade vitamins. You need to find a pharmaceutical grade vitamin. Pharmaceutical means what is on the side of the bottle Is what is in the Vitamin. Imagine how the study would've turned out with a pharmaceutical grade vitamin.
The article starts out by claiming that "after years of research showing dietary supplements failed to prevent cancer" we finally have a product that works.. Centrum. But a closer look reveals that this research seems to largely amount to an endorsement (advertisement) of Pfizer's Centrum, camouflaged as an impartial scientific study. A huge chemical corporation co-funded the study, Pfizer provided -free of charge- all the vitamins, at least one study author received funding from several drug companies, while several study authors didn't report "financial disclosures".
The implication is that the public ought to stick to "safe", RDA-level types of vitamins, such as Centrum to get a small but significant benefit. Anything above RDAs is presumed to be unsafe and ineffective. Yet, doses much higher than RDAs are the most beneficial. But those types of supplements compete with Pfizer's and all other drug companies' main aim: to make money from chronic diseases with drugs.
Virtually all accounts of discrediting the safety and effectiveness of vitamins at therapeutic/high levels is nothing more than propaganda and fearmongering over supplements (see supplements-and-health.com ), for political reasons.
For those who think that this is a phony study, Physicians' Health Study has published over 400 scientific articles: phs.bwh.harvard.edu/pubs.htm. This is the study that discovered that aspirin use can help prevent heart attacks.
"gold-standard research that included nearly 15,000 male doctors older than 50 for up to 13 years."
I'm sorry but "gold-standard" research would not use a population of male doctors. Can this information be applicable to the general public? Some would say yes and others would say no.
Now i start to eat lot of vitamins
Who paid for the study? Funny that they only used the Pfizer multivitamins...