Breakthrough: Scientists have found that taking multivitamins may dramatically boost older women's chances of beating breast cancer (stock image)
Scientists believe they have made a breakthrough in the fight against breast cancer – which kills 1,000 British women every month.
Research has found multivitamins may dramatically boost older women’s chances of beating the disease.
Taking the pills daily cut death rates by 30 per cent among post-menopausal breast cancer sufferers.
Professor Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, who led the study, said the findings were ‘surprising’ because multivitamins had never been found to reduce the odds of developing breast cancer in the first place.
About 48,000 women develop the disease each year in the UK.
She said: ‘We don’t know how these multivitamins and minerals might work, but they could contribute to women’s overall health, which may help them better withstand the assault that cancer represents.’
One theory is that vitamins help at a cellular level by stopping a process called oxidation, which is linked to cancer development.
Prof Wassertheil-Smoller, from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, and her colleagues made their conclusions after looking at survival rates in almost 8,000 women aged 50 to 79 who had been diagnosed with invasive breast cancer.
Participants were followed for an average of seven years after being diagnosed. Just over a third took combined multivitamin and mineral supplements while the remainder did not.
Those who took the daily pills were found to be 30 per cent less likely to have died of the disease within the study period than those who did not take them.
However, specialists are likely to take some convincing that multivitamins have such a powerful anti-cancer effect because so many other studies have been inconclusive.
They also point out that women who take multivitamins are more likely to live healthy lives than those who do not. On average they are thinner, take more exercise and smoke less.
Study: Scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, looked at survival rates in almost 8,000 women aged 50 to 79 who had been diagnosed with invasive breast cancer (stock image)
But Prof Wassertheil-Smoller, who has spent decades examining health issues affecting older women, said the results of the study held true even adjusting for these differences.
She stressed that multivitamins appear to have no beneficial effect on survival among younger breast cancer patients.
Eluned Hughes, Head of Public Health at Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said: ‘Although these results are promising, much more research is vital in order for us to truly understand whether multivitamins are beneficial in the fight against breast cancer and ultimately stop women dying from the disease.
‘We advise women receiving treatment for breast cancer to speak to their oncologist about taking any supplements as some can interfere with treatments.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2467729/Taking-vitamin-pills-daily-cut-breast-cancer-death-rate-30.html#ixzz2iHx87ZZ8
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