Multivitamin use reduces cancer risk. Now…what’s wrong with this picture?

Chalk it up. It’s another missed opportunity. And it was a big one.

Just a few months ago, I told you about a huge vitamin E study. It was supposed to assess prostate cancer risk. But researchers used an inferior, synthetic supplement. So all that time, effort, and money was tossed to the wind.

Meanwhile, more than 35,000 study subjects wasted three years of their lives taking either the junk supplement or a placebo. It was a sad squandered opportunity.

And it’s the same story with a new study you might have heard about. Multivitamin use reduced cancer risk!

Looks good in the headlines. But again… Such a waste.

Hard pill to swallow

For about 11 years, more than 14,600 men took the multivitamin Centrum Silver.

The study calls the outcome a “statistically significant reduction in the incidence of total cancer.”

In research language, that means it just barely registers. It’s scant. The actual reduction was just 8%.

Meanwhile, there was no significant effect on individual cancers. There was also no significant difference in the risk of cancer mortality. So all those headlines about Centrum “combating” cancer are exaggerated. And that’s being generous.

Now, imagine if researchers had used a supplement with higher potency. That’s a study that might have produced invaluable insights about multi benefits.

Centrum potency is laughably low. For instance…

• Vitamin C — Just 60 mg. Paltry!
• Vitamin D — 500 IU. You get that much D from summer sun exposure in less than two minutes.
• Vitamin E — Only 50 IU. Ridiculous. But that might be a good thing. It’s the same lousy synthetic form that was the downfall of that earlier E study I mentioned.

So why did the researchers use Centrum?

Here’s my guess: It was a blatant kowtowing to the Big Kahuna corporate player in this study.

You see, Centrum is made by Pfizer. And Pfizer supplied the supplements and placebos. That’s more than 29,000,000 multivitamin pills, and a similar number of placebo pills.

So Pfizer didn’t fund the study. But the company played a key role and made a sizeable investment. And needless to say, it had a huge stake in the outcome.

That might explain why the authors wrote in the conclusion to the study… “Daily multivitamin supplementation modestly but significantly reduced the risk of total cancer.”

Modestly but significantly? No. That’s absurd. It can’t be both. Modest? Yes. But notice they avoided the phrase “statistically significant” in their conclusion. They shorthanded it to “significantly.” Risk reduction of 60% would be significant. Even 40% would pass as significant.

But 8%? No. That is NOT significant. But I suspect Pfizer executives were satisfied to see it described that way.

Tomorrow I’ll take a look at multivitamins from a different perspective. In other words, we’ll see it without the Pfizer filter.

Sources:
“Multivitamins in the Prevention of Cancer in Men:  The Physicians’ Health Study II Randomized Controlled Trial” Journal of the American Medical Association, Published online ahead of print, 10/17/12, jama.jamanetwork.com

“Multivitamin Cuts Cancer Risk, Large Study Finds” Ron Winslow, The Wall St. Journal, 10/17/12, online.wsj.com