Advertisement

Vitamin ill

Your supplement habit could hit you in a sensitive area. Taking high amounts of vitamin E tablets may increase your risk of prostate cancer by 17 per cent, claim researchers at the Cleveland Clinic in Chicago.

The researchers initially set out to prove earlier reports that the vitamin, plus selenium, could help prevent the cancer, but instead say they found the opposite.

Over 35,000 men took part in the original trial, where they were given a placebo, or combinations of 400 international units of vitamin E and selenium every day for three years. The trial was stopped in 2008 because it hadn’t hit the expected 25 per cent reduction in cancer risk.

But researchers kept monitoring the participants and noticed that those in the non-placebo group had a higher rate of prostate cancer. All up, 620 taking vitamin E alone developed prostate cancer, compared with 575 taking selenium, 555 taking both supplements and 529 given placebos.

The study authors say the extra risk linked to vitamin E became obvious during the trial’s third year, and could not have been a coincidence, but that it remains a biological “mystery” why taking vitamin E should result in an extra risk of prostate cancer.