Vitamin E provides no protection against heart attacks, strokes or cancer, despite millions of people believing it does, a JAMA study shows:
Design, Setting, and Participants In the Women’s Health Study conducted between 1992 and 2004, 39,876 apparently healthy US women aged at least 45 years were randomly assigned to receive vitamin E or placebo and aspirin or placebo, using a 2 x 2 factorial design, and were followed up for an average of 10.1 years.
Intervention Administration of 600 IU of natural-source vitamin E on alternate days.
(Snip)
Conclusions The data from this large trial indicated that 600 IU of natural-source vitamin E taken every other day provided no overall benefit for major cardiovascular events or cancer, did not affect total mortality, and decreased cardiovascular mortality in healthy women. These data do not support recommending vitamin E supplementation for cardiovascular disease or cancer prevention among healthy women.
Vitamin E did nothing to reduce cardiovascular disease. There were 482 heart attacks or strokes in the group of women who received vitamin E compared with 517 in the placebo group – no significant difference.
The BBC, comments on the study:
The Harvard Medical School team said their trial was "the longest of any completed to date" to look at such trends and should, therefore, "be sufficient to detect long-term effects".
They go on to illustrate a confounding factor that may have previously led people to believe vitamin E actually did some good:
The researchers suggested that the fact that people who take vitamin supplements and eat food rich in vitamins tend to be generally more healthy anyway might explain why past work found a benefit with vitamin E.
This of course illustrates why such large double blind studies are needed to determine if a therapy has any benefit. Vitamin E has now been shown by this and earlier studies, to be of no benefit. In addition, high doses of vitamin E can actually be harmful. People should save their money.
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