Are you one of those people who tosses down some dozen or more pellets a day? Highly touted anti-oxidants? A king-size dose of vitamin C and a wallop of calcium so your bones don't turn to dust as you get past 50? How about n-acetyl cysteine and all the other stuff recommended by your doctor?
Get them out of there toute suite! They're killing you!
Vitamin pills commonly taken by millions of people are doing them more harm than good, an analysis of the evidence has concluded. Three supplements — vitamins A and E and beta carotene — appear to increase death rates among those taking them. Vitamin C and selenium have no effect.
The new study is a meta-analysis; a procedure in which many earlier studies are collected together. It was carried out by a team led by Goran Bjelakovic, of Copenhagen University Hospital, and colleagues, using methods developed by the Cochrane Collaboration, the leading international group specialising in the analysis of what works in medicine.
Supporters of vitamin supplements, which are consumed regularly by up to ten million Britons, believe these can act as antioxidants, preventing highly active oxygen radicals in the body-damaging molecules such as cholesterol causing heart disease. The theory seemed plausible, and some initial trial results appeared to lend it support. But as better trials were done different results emerged. The Copenhagen team considered 68 randomised control trials, involving 232,606 people, and published by October 2005. Of these, they rate 47 trials as being of the best quality, with the rest more prone to bias of one sort or another.
Taking only the 47 low-bias trials, involving 180,938 people, they found that supplements as a whole increased the death rate by 5 per cent. When the supplements were taken separately, beta carotene increased death rates by 7 per cent, vitamin A by 16 per cent, and vitamin E by 4 per cent. Vitamin C gave contradictory results, but when given singly or in combination with other vitamins in good-quality trials, increased the death rate by 6 per cent.
Well actually, the Times article notes, selenium may not actually kill you. But you don't need it. Letter writers protesting the article raise the point that that JAMA has been linked to the American pharmaceutical industry. But Pharma may not reach as far as Copenhagen.
