vitamin E and prostate cancer risk

Last reviewed 06/2022

  • in a study investigating whether selenium and/or vitamin E supplementation (either 200 µg of selenomethionine or 400 IU of synthetic vitamin E, given orally alone or combined for a median of 5.5 years) would prevent prostate cancer the authors concluded that:

    • "...SELECT has definitively demonstrated that selenium, vitamin E, or selenium with vitamin E (at the tested doses and formulations) did not prevent prostate cancer in the generally healthy, heterogeneous population of men in SELECT..."

  • a further study investigated whether vitamin E supplentation or vitamin C supplementation might prevent prostate cancer or reduce total cancer risk
    • in this large, long-term trial of male physicians, neither vitamin E nor C supplementation reduced the risk of prostate or total cancer (2)

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