Tuesday, October 15, 2013. The journal Breast Cancer Research and Treatment published an article this month which reported a lower risk of mortality from invasive breast cancer among patients who used multivitamin/mineral supplements. "Our study offers tentative but intriguing evidence that multivitamin/mineral supplements may help older women who develop invasive breast cancer survive their disease," commented lead author Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, PhD, who is a distinguished university professor emerita of epidemiology and population health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.
Dr Wassertheil-Smoller and her associates analyzed data from 7,728 women diagnosed with invasive breast cancer following enrollment in the Women's Health Initiative. The subjects' use of nutritional supplements was ascertained upon enrollment and at the visit closest to the time of diagnosis. The women, who were between the ages of 50 and 79 years at enrollment, were followed for 7.1 years after diagnosis, during which 518 deaths were documented.
Adjusted analysis of the data uncovered a 30% lower risk of dying from invasive breast cancer among women who used multivitamin/mineral supplements in comparison with those who did not report their use. Further adjustment for additional factors failed to significantly modify the association. "Controlling for these other factors strengthens our confidence that the association we observed – between taking multivitamin/mineral supplements and lowering breast-cancer mortality risk among postmenopausal women with invasive breast cancer – is a real one," stated Dr Wassertheil-Smoller. "But further studies are needed to confirm whether there truly is a cause-and-effect relationship here."
