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| Doubts on Vitamin E, Aspirin for Prevention (Health) |
| | Poster: Washington Post | Posting Date: 2005-07-07 | |
By David Brown, Washington Post Staff Writer 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."
In March, the researchers reported in another journal that aspirin did not lower the rate of heart attack or cardiovascular death in the women -- a result that "surprised" them, Cook said yesterday. (Aspirin did slightly lower the risk of stroke.) Elsewhere, though, there appears to be growing support for routine use of aspirin by healthy people. A team of epidemiologists last month proposed in the British Medical Journal that people older than 50 take aspirin, unless they are allergic to it. They said that cardiovascular benefits, as well as possible protection against cancer and Alzheimer's disease, outweighed aspirin's hazards, which are chiefly bleeding in the stomach and brain. Among the women taking Vitamin E, there were 308 cancer deaths, and among those taking a placebo, there were 275. Women older than 65 taking Vitamin E had slightly fewer heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular deaths than those taking a placebo -- 130 vs. 176. Among women of all ages, there were also slightly fewer cardiovascular deaths with Vitamin E. Curiously, however, deaths from heart attack and stroke were not significantly reduced, suggesting the difference must lie in mortality from abnormal heart rhythms.
That is not the conclusion reached by the Council for Responsible Nutrition, the trade association of the dietary supplement industry. "Something has to be going on there," said Andrew Shao, a biochemist there in charge of regulatory and scientific affairs. "I would hope that Americans who are using Vitamin E on a regular basis would continue to do so." An analysis of several Vitamin E trials suggested supplements may increase the risk of death from all causes. The Women's Health Study did not find this. Over a decade, 636 women
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