Thursday, March 24, 2011

Multivitamins Do Not Lower Cancer, Heart Disease Risk

A recent study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology has found that taking a multivitamin does not lower the risk of cancer or heart disease death in older adults.

Song-Yi Park, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Hawaii Cancer Center, along with her team of researchers, studied more than 82,000 men and almost 100,000 women with an average age of 60. The group included both multivitamin users and non-users.

Researchers looked at how many of the 180,000 people died over an 11 year period of follow-up, in addition to the cause of death. They found that death rates were the same for both multivitamin users and non-users, with 6 per 100 people dying from heart disease, 5 per 100 dying from cancer, and 4 per 100 dying from other causes.

According to the National Institutes of Health, doctors should only prescribe multivitamins to patients that require additional vitamins because they are unable to adequately absorb vitamins from food, or because they cannot consume enough food to get a sufficient amount of vitamins. This study suggests that multivitamins do not prevent cancer or heart disease-related deaths; although many multivitamin users believe they are lowering their risk of such diseases by taking them.

The American Cancer Society reports that cancer causes about 560,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, while heart disease is responsible for roughly 616,000 deaths. If you or a loved one was hurt or died as a result of delayed diagnosis or treatment of cancer or heart disease, call or email the medical malpractice attorneys at Silberstein, Awad & Miklos, P.C. today. One of our experienced medical malpractice lawyers will review your case free of charge and answer any questions you may have.

Call us toll-free, 1-877-ASK4SAM

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