B Vitamins and Breast Cancer

The following information is from Dr. Jeffrey Blumberg from Tufts University via Dr. Stephen Chaney.

Today we're going to look at a study called the "The Women's Antioxidant and Folic Acid Cardiovascular Study".

I've already told you that in the same study vitamin E reduced the risk of cardiovascular disease by 23% for those women with a previous history of cardiovascular disease (Cook et al., Arch. Intern. Med., 167: 1610 - 1618, 2007).

Today I'm going to talk about the results of another part of the study - the effects of B vitamins on the risk of invasive cancer, particularly breast cancer, in women.

In this portion of the study 5442 female health professionals received a daily vitamin pill containing

2.5 mg of folate, 50 mg of vitamin B6 and 1 mg of vitamin B12 or a placebo and were followed for an average of 7.3 years.

The headlines that you may have seen said "B vitamins do not prevent total cancer or breast cancer in women".

But, once again, the headlines did not tell the whole story.

In the women who were 65 years old or older, B vitamin supplementation reduced the risk of total invasive cancer by 25% and the risk of breast cancer by 38%.  So the headlines could just as well have said "B vitamins reduce the risk of total cancer and breast cancer in older women".

But I guess that wasn't deemed to be newsworthy.

Dr. Stephen Chaney, PhD


How you can get all B vitamins, is simple.  Click here.