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Medical Forum / Diseases and Disorders / Prostate Cancer / May 2007Excess Vitamins & Pca
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?alias=too-many-vitamins-linked&chanID=sa003&mod src=reuters This may be the article....... Hum............ No vitamins, no drinking, no meat, no smoking...........hum...... John Loomis WASHINGTON - There's more worrisome news about vitamins: Taking too many may increase men's risk of dying from prostate cancer. The study, being published Wednesday, doesn't settle the issue. But it is the biggest yet to suggest high-dose multivitamins may harm the prostate, and the latest chapter in the confusing quest to tell whether taking various vitamins really helps a variety of conditions - or is a waste of money, or worse. Government scientists turned to a study tracking the diet and health of almost 300,000 men. About a third reported taking a daily multivitamin, and 5 percent were heavy users, swallowing the pills more than seven times a week. Within five years of the study's start, 10,241 men had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Some 1,476 had advanced cancer; 179 died. Heavy multivitamin users were almost twice as likely to get fatal prostate cancer as men who never took the pills, concludes the study in Wednesday's Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Here's the twist: Overall, the researchers found no link between multivitamin use and early-stage prostate cancer. The researchers speculate that perhaps high-dose vitamins had little effect until a tumor appeared, and then could spur its growth. While similar but smaller studies have suggested a link, too, more rigorous research is needed, caution the National Cancer Institute scientists. This newest study involves men who voluntarily took vitamins, and those most at risk - perhaps because they had a family history of the disease - may have been more likely to take the pills in hopes of avoiding their fate. Still, "the findings lend further credence to the possibility of harm associated with increased use of supplements," Dr. Christian Gluud of Copenhagen University Hospital and Dr. Goran Bjelakovic of Serbia's University of Nis wrote in an accompanying editorial. > http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?alias=too-many-vitamins-linked&chanID=sa003&mod src=reuters Hello, all: Please, *please* make sure you read this paragraph, too: > While similar but smaller studies have suggested a link, too, more rigorous > research is needed, caution the National Cancer Institute scientists. This > newest study involves men who voluntarily took vitamins, and those most at > risk - perhaps because they had a family history of the disease - may have > been more likely to take the pills in hopes of avoiding their fate. There are many spurious correlations. For example: you can find the number of TV sets per 1000 citizens for countries worldwide, and also find the childhood (under 5 years old) mortality rate for those same countries. You will find a high negative correlation; that is, countries with a lot of TVs per 1000 citizens have a low childhood mortality rate, while countries with a low number of TVs per 1000 have a high childhood mortality rate. So, we have a correlation. Would taking away TVs in America cause the US childhood mortality rate to rise? Of course not! Clearly socio-economic factors are at work, affecting both variables. It would be a more humorous example if it didn't involve one of the more depressing statistics around. Neverthess, this is one of my favorite example from my statistics course. The obvious point is this: *By itself, correlation _never_ implies a causal link.* I tell my students that if they remember nothing else from the course, that they should remember this. (BTW, the inspiration for this example is from Allan Rossman's *Workshop Statistics*. He uses countries in Africa. The data I use in my class is for all the member countries of the UN, and is collected from the UNICEF publication *State of the World's Children*.) Think about that last sentence in the paragraph from the article: "... those most at risk - perhaps because they had a family history of the disease - may have been more likely to take the pills in hopes of avoiding their fate." Does that not describe several of us in this newsgroup? A man who watches his father and/or his grandfather go through PCa starts taking steps to avoid it, possibly including taking a multivitamin supplement. So, men like that are among the group being studied, and thus the subsample is possibly already skewed toward having a higher percentage of men with PCa. Is it worth further investigation? Probably. If the presence of too much of a particular vitamin triggers prostate cancer, we surely should find that out. But the medical community is nowhere near answering a question like that. Please do not overreact to studies like this. --charlie WTF? Damned if you do, damned of if you don't? > http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?alias=too-many-vitamins-linked&chanID=sa003&mod src=reuters http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?alias=too-many-vitamins-linked&chanID=sa003&mod src=reuters knowledge is power - growing old is mandatory - growing wise is optional "Many more men die with prostate cancer than of it. Growing old is invariably fatal. Prostate cancer is only sometimes so." http://community.webtv.net/PALMER_ENT/doc http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?alias=too-many-vitamins-linked&chanID=sa003&mod src=reuters knowledge is power - growing old is mandatory - growing wise is optional "Many more men die with prostate cancer than of it. Growing old is invariably fatal. Prostate cancer is only sometimes so." http://community.webtv.net/PALMER_ENT/doc http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?alias=too-many-vitamins-linked&chanID=sa003&mod src=reuters ===> something happen. first time it sent empty responses. well, back to the subject. i guess we will have to file this report with all of the others like: - is salt good or bad for you? - is coffee good or bad for you? - is tea good or bad for you? the next thing they will say is that living on this earth will cause death in the long run... knowledge is power - growing old is mandatory - growing wise is optional "Many more men die with prostate cancer than of it. Growing old is invariably fatal. Prostate cancer is only sometimes so." http://community.webtv.net/PALMER_ENT/doc > http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?alias=too-many-vitamins-linked&chanID=sa003&mod src=reuters It is important to note that it was excessive use of vitamins that was associated with metastatic prostate cancer. That doesn't mean that men who used vitamins in moderation also had an increased risk. It is also important to note that studies of this kind can be misleading. For example, there could be some factor which both increased the risk of metastatic prostate cancer and also increased the frequency with which men used vitamins, although I have to admit I can't think of one. As the article said, this is just reason for further study. I use vitamins, but I try to be careful not to overdo it. This can be hard to do sometimes because those who package vitamins keep putting more and more things into them. So you have to read labels carefully and make sure you don't overdose on any particular component. Selenium is an example of something some of us take regularly. Researchers originally tried to determine if selenium supplements would prevent recurrence of skin cancer. It didn't, but they were surprised to find that the incidence of some major cancers, including prostate cancer, was reduced. Of course, those results could be misleading for all the usual reasons. To establish whether or not selenium is effective, a double blind prospective study was instituted. Here men are divided at random into two groups, one of which takes the supplements (200 micrograms of selenium and 400 units of Vitamin E) and the other takes a placebo. I don't believe the results are in yet. Of course, it could turn out that selenium does protect you from getting prostate cancer in the first place but if you get it anyway, it may make it worse. Let's hope the ongoing study settles the matter in the not too distant future. |
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