Hi Guys,
In 2008 supplements failed once again in a prostate cancer trial called SELECT, it seems to be hard to find a large cancer trial where supplements have worked and yet every salesman/manufacturer quotes rubbish like ..... this product is known to cure/treat/prevent cancer. Studies involving only a few people don't count because you can't control well enough for confounding bias/chance. Look at the SELECT trial.

National Cancer Institute National Cancer Institute
U.S. National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute

The SELECT Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial

Posted: 07/24/2001 Updated: 12/02/2008

Introduction

SELECT (the Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial) is the largest-ever prostate cancer prevention trial. Previous studies suggested that selenium and vitamin E (alone or in combination) might reduce the risk of developing prostate cancer by 60 percent and 30 percent, respectively, but only a large clinical trial such as SELECT could confirm those initial findings.

Initial independent review of study data from SELECT, carried out in September and October of 2008, shows that selenium and vitamin in E supplements, taken either alone or together for an average of five years, did not prevent prostate cancer. The data also showed two concerning trends: a small increase in the number of prostate cancer cases in men taking only vitamin E and a small increase in the number of cases of diabetes in men taking only selenium. Neither of these findings proves an increased risk from the supplements and may be due to chance. These initial results were published by the Journal of the American Medical Association online on December 9, 2008 (see the abstract).

In October 2008, participants were told to stop taking their study supplements. They will continue to have their health monitored by study staff for about three years, including prostate cancer screening tests. This additional follow up will help to determine the long-term effects of having taken either supplement or placebo and will help to complete a biorepository of blood samples that will be used in extensive molecular analyses of prostate cancer, other cancers, and other diseases of men's aging.

SELECT began enrolling patients on August 22, 2001, and closed enrollment on June 24, 2004, with 35,534 participants. About 15 percent of the participants are African-American. The study includes men 55 and older. African-American men, 50 and over, were eligible to enroll because prostate cancer strikes African-American men earlier and more often than white men. There are more than 400 SELECT sites throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, and Canada.

Coordinated by a network of researchers called the Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG), the study is sponsored by the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

SWOG maintains a Web page with information about SELECT.

To get more information about SELECT, call 1-800-4-CANCER in the United States and Puerto Rico or 1-888-939-3333 in Canada.



I think we have to treat cancer like farmers treat weeds Slash,Burn and Poison at least until more evidence comes to hand.

Cheers

We need supplements, when we take strong medication for cancer. But supplements alone would not work to get cured completely from the disease.

Hi livehealthy,

We have to be very careful about how we promote supplements, if we do it irresponsibly we can give people false hope, and the actual facts, which we should be dealing with exclusively, rarely shows a positive outcome for vitamins in supplemental form. In some research trials vitamin supplements have been shown to be positively dangerous and life threatening, such as the multi-vitamin trial a couple of years ago.

Vitamin C increased the risk of cancer from nitrosamines in the artificial stomach trial when 10% fat was added to the stomach, and 10% is reasonable when you think how much fat we consume when we eat a breakfast of bacon and eggs.

Livehealthy if you have a good point to make support it with research, what was you thinking when you said people need supplements when they are being treated for cancer, whatever they propose to take would need to be evaluated for risk of interaction with the cancer drugs.

Cheers