Multivitamins Linked to Breast Cancer Risk
Study Shows Higher Risk of Breast Cancer Among Women Who Report Taking Multivitamins
By Denise Mann
WebMD Health NewsReviewed by Laura J. Martin, MDApril 1, 2010 -- The message is hammered home every time we turn on the TV: Taking a daily multivitamin can help improve our overall health and well-being and may even protect against diseases like cancer. But now a new study suggests that this seemingly healthy habit may actually increase the risk of breast cancer.
The new findings appear online in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
In the study of more than 35,000 Swedish women aged 49 to 83, 25.5% said they took multivitamins. None of the women had cancer when the study began. During about 10 years of follow-up, 974 women were diagnosed with breast cancer, and 293 of these diagnoses occurred among the 9,017 women who reported using multivitamins.
Overall, women who reported taking multivitamins were 19% more likely to develop breast cancer than their counterparts who said they did not take daily multivitamins. These findings held after the researchers adjusted for other risk factors including family history, advancing age, body mass index, smoking status, and alcohol use.
"The potential health benefits or adverse effects associated with multivitamin use are of great public health importance [and] the observed association is of concern and merits further investigation," conclude the researchers, who were led by Susanna C. Larsson, PhD, of the division of nutritional epidemiology at the National Institute of Environmental Medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.
http://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/news/20100401/multivitamins-linked-to-breast-cancer-risk
19% more likely sounds like inconclusive data to me, there are far to many factors involved with cancer, therefore this data needs a higher percentage to hold true
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I think that there needs to be more data as well. When I first was reading over the article, I asked myself if they took into consideration family history and such which it appears they did. However, I still think there needs to be more data which includes more factors, maybe things like what their diet consists of. If they do prove this to be completely true, what a stink that will bring, interesting concept though.
ReplyDeleteThat's a pretty staggering fact. There could be a lot of confounding variables. Maybe the women who were more likely to develop cancer were taking a vitamin that has more than the recommended values. Or maybe the values need to be changed.
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