WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vitamin C can impede the growth of some types of tumors although not in the way some scientists had suspected, researchers reported on Monday.
The new research, published in the journal Cancer Cell, supported the general notion that vitamin C and other so-called antioxidants can slow tumor growth, but pointed to a mechanism different from the one many experts had suspected...But researchers led by Dr. Chi Dang, a professor of medicine and oncology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, found that antioxidants appear to be working in a different way -- undermining a tumor's ability to grow under certain conditions.
Figuring out how antioxidants impede tumors should help scientists figure out how they might be harnessed to fight cancer, Dang said. In addition to the cancer types involved in this study, others that might be vulnerable to vitamin C include colon cancer and cervical cancer, he said.
LONDON (Reuters) - People who take regular doses of vitamin D have a significantly lower risk of dying early than those who do not use supplements, according to new research published on Monday.
Previous studies have suggested vitamin D deficiency increases the risk of cancer, heart disease or diabetes, but the new findings indicate the vitamin provides an even bigger bang, researchers wrote in the Archives of Internal Medicine."Intake of ordinary doses of vitamin D supplements seems to be associated with decreases in total mortality rates," said Philippe Autier of the International Agency for Cancer Research in France and Sara Gandini of the European Institute of Oncology in Milan.
The reasons why were not clear but the researchers suggested the vitamin might block cancer cells from spreading or boost the immune system.
They did not conduct the studies themselves but did what is called a meta-analysis by reviewing 18 separate trials involving nearly 60,000 patients. The doses averaged 528 international units, within the range of most commercially available vitamin D supplements.
They found that nearly 5,000 of the participants in the studies died over an average follow-up period of 5.7 years, with the data showing that those who took vitamin D supplements had a 7 percent lower risk of death.
The team did not consider the specific causes of death in the studies, which included mostly healthy middle-aged or elderly people. They said further investigation was needed to find those kinds of answers.
DALLAS (Reuters) - Regular doses of vitamin E may reduce the risk of life-threatening blood clots in women, researchers reported on Monday.
But they cautioned that more research is needed to confirm the link in the prevention of the clots, known as venous thromboembolism, and said patients should not stop taking prescribed blood thinners."The data indicated that, in general, women taking vitamin E were 21 percent less likely to suffer a blood clot," the American Heart Association, which published the finding in its journal Circulation, said in a statement.
"This is an exciting and interesting finding, but I don't think it's proven," Dr. Robert Glynn of Harvard Medical School said.
Subscribe to this blog's feed
