Cool. Huge prospective study. They demonstrated that there’s no reduction in (several types of) cancer or heart attack mortality with either vit. E or vit. C supplementation (400 IU of vitamin E every other day and 500 mg of vitamin C daily). It’s strange to me that they don’t look at all-cause mortality.
I think they did look at overall mortality. Quoting from the abstract of the 2008 paper
Neither vitamin E (HR, 1.07 [95% CI, 0.97-1.18]; P = .15) nor vitamin C (HR, 1.07 [95% CI, 0.97-1.18]; P = .16) had a significant effect on total mortality but vitamin E was associated with an increased risk of hemorrhagic stroke (HR, 1.74 [95% CI, 1.04-2.91]; P = .04).)
You’re right. I missed it. I know they say it’s not significant, but in fact the two P=.15 are weakly convincing to me (95% CI of .97-1.18). The old men are dying off 7% more often if they have the (thought to be reasonable at the beginning of the study) dose of vit C or E (compared to placebo). Redo the study and you’ll probably get something like 4-10% instead of 7%. I think this is pretty good evidence for Robin’s claim.
This sort of binary treatment-variable study can always be criticized for overly high doseage, as Phil Goetz pointed out. The 400 IU vit E every 2 days is well under the dose already commonly accepted to cause long-term problems (400 IU daily). The 500mg vit. C daily is well above the highest dietary recommendation of 100mg/day, but it’s well below the amount some people take.
Cool. Huge prospective study. They demonstrated that there’s no reduction in (several types of) cancer or heart attack mortality with either vit. E or vit. C supplementation (400 IU of vitamin E every other day and 500 mg of vitamin C daily). It’s strange to me that they don’t look at all-cause mortality.
I think they did look at overall mortality. Quoting from the abstract of the 2008 paper
You’re right. I missed it. I know they say it’s not significant, but in fact the two P=.15 are weakly convincing to me (95% CI of .97-1.18). The old men are dying off 7% more often if they have the (thought to be reasonable at the beginning of the study) dose of vit C or E (compared to placebo). Redo the study and you’ll probably get something like 4-10% instead of 7%. I think this is pretty good evidence for Robin’s claim.
This sort of binary treatment-variable study can always be criticized for overly high doseage, as Phil Goetz pointed out. The 400 IU vit E every 2 days is well under the dose already commonly accepted to cause long-term problems (400 IU daily). The 500mg vit. C daily is well above the highest dietary recommendation of 100mg/day, but it’s well below the amount some people take.