Multivitamins provide little help for postmenopausal women

William Atkins
Tuesday, 17 February 2009 18:25

Science - Health

Based on this data, the researchers concluded that there was “no association of multivitamin use with risk of cancer.”

Specifically, they found that the use of multivitamins for postmenopausal women did not reduce the risk for breast cancer, colorectal cancer, endometrial cancer, lung cancer, ovarian cancer, CVD [myocardial infarction (heart attack), stroke, venous thromboembolism (blood clot in veins)], and mortality (death).

However, they did find that the women (3,741 within the study) who took stress multivitamins, which are made specifically with larger doses of several B vitamins and Vitamin C, were 25% less likely to have a heart attack (myocardial infarction).

There were no other (relevant statistical) correlations between multivitamins and reduced risk from any of the studied diseases or conditions.

They stated in the abstract to their paper, “… the Women's Health Initiative study provided convincing evidence that multivitamin use has little or no influence on the risk of common cancers, CVD, or total mortality in postmenopausal women."

The authors are associated with the following organizations:

Division of Public Health Sciences, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington (Neuhouser, Anderson, Patterson, LaCroix, Prentice, and Aragaki)

Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, New York (Wassertheil-Smoller and Rohan)

Department of Nutritional Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson (Thomson)

Division of Preventive Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts (Manson)

Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Inc, San Diego, California (Patterson)

Department of Preventive Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois (van Horn)

Division of Preventive Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham (Shikany)

Medstar Research Institute, Washington, DC (Thomas).

Learn more about multivitamins at the Office of Dietary Supplements (U.S. National Institutes of Health).