Does Vitamin E increase risk of prostate cancer for men? page

[Frank the Tank]

I take Damage Control which as 400 IU's of Vitamin E. Just came across this article and am very concerned:

Use of vitamin E associated with increased risk of prostate cancer: study

Use of vitamin E associated with increased risk of prostate cancer: study

[SlimIcy]

I'm not a study expert but I wouldn't put a ton of faith in something like this. You can't dismiss it out of hand, either, but I've heard a lot of people mention that these studies often contain weird factors that aren't truly accounted for in terms of causation. Mostly things like men who take multi-vitamins are more likely to be eating unhealthy, or already unhealthy before the study started.

[Finnegans Wake]

The study utilized dl-alpha-tocopheryl acetate (rac-α-tocopheryl acetate), the synthetic form of vitamin E, which does not have the bioavailability of d-alpha-tocopheryl (the natural form). That is worth noting.

However, the study did nothing to control other variables, such as smoking, diet, exercise, etc. At the risk of redundancy, correlation ≠ causation makes me conclude Gee, that's not really conclusive at all.

The primary analysis included 34 887 men who were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 treatment groups: 8752 to receive selenium; 8737, vitamin E; 8702, both agents, and 8696, placebo... Compared with the placebo (referent group) in which 529 men developed prostate cancer, 620 men in the vitamin E group developed prostate cancer... Conclusion Dietary supplementation with vitamin E significantly increased the risk of prostate cancer among healthy men.

OK, let's look at this. The placebo group developed prostate cancer at a rate of 529/8696, or 6.08%. The (synthetic) vitamin E group developed prostate cancer at a rate of 620/8737, or 7.10%. So the takeaway is that IF you take 400 IU or more of synthetic vitamin E, it MAY increase your likelihood of getting prostate cancer from 6% to 7% ASSUMING no other uncontrolled confounding variables might be the culprit.

So, caveat emptor.

[Bosnic]

Many vitamin E supplements are manufactured from soy. Soy is filled with phytoestrogens, and is generally a hormone disruptor. An increase in estrogens is particularly harmful for the prostate.

At least, this is my theory.

[IvyBlue]

A couple of years before adopting primal I started taking a powdered multi w/ 400iu's of E (the natural kind) and it eliminated symptoms of benign prostate enlargement I was developing so I'm loathe to give them up.

I saw this in the paper and dug in and applied the Tom Naughton analysis and saw nothing that worries me particularly, also summarized by Finnegan's Wake above. Statistical significance does not mean what non-scientists take it to mean.

[Mike in Virginia]

The study utilized dl-alpha-tocopheryl acetate (rac-α-tocopheryl acetate), the synthetic form of vitamin E, which does not have the bioavailability of d-alpha-tocopheryl (the natural form). That is worth noting.

However, the study did nothing to control other variables, such as smoking, diet, exercise, etc. At the risk of redundancy, correlation ≠ causation makes me conclude Gee, that's not really conclusive at all.

+1 Studies that use synthetic vitamin E are inherently useless for evaluating the efficacy of real vitamin E. And most studies of any type cannot and do not control for variables, and thus are useless also.