Healthy Women Don't Need Aspirin, Vitamin E

109 20
Healthy Women Don't Need Aspirin, Vitamin E

Healthy Women Don't Need Aspirin, Vitamin E


Regular Aspirin or Vitamin E Doesn't Prevent Cancer, Heart Disease in Women

July 5, 2005 -- Neither aspirin nor vitamin E is a magic pill to prevent heart disease -- or most cancers -- in healthy women.

The findings come from a large, decade-long, clinical trial known as the Women's Health Study. Nearly 40,000 healthy women aged 45 and older took a white pill once a day -- for half it was low-dose aspirin; for the other half, inert placebo (fake pill) -- and an amber capsule the next day -- 600 IU vitamin E for half, placebo for the other half.

Ten years later, researchers looked at whether aspirin or vitamin E affected the women's risk of cancer or heart disease. The results appear in the July 6 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Nancy R. Cook, ScD, of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard University, reported the aspirin results. Her colleague, I-Min Lee, ScD, reported vitamin E results.

"We saw no overall effect of aspirin on total cancer, on breast cancer, or on colon cancer," Cook tells WebMD. "We did see some evidence of a protective effect against lung cancer -- particularly death from lung cancer -- but that needs to be confirmed with other data."

"Vitamin E does not protect healthy women against heart disease, stroke, or cancer," Lee tells WebMD. "A lot of people are looking for the magic bullet. It is easier to pop a pill than to do things we know protect you from cancer and heart disease -- keeping weight down, exercising, and getting proper cancer screening. Unfortunately, the study shows that vitamin E does not protect against these diseases."

Aspirin, Vitamin E: Not Magic Bullets

The study showed that low-dose aspirin:
  • Had no affect on women's total cancer risk.
  • Had no affect on women's risk of breast, colorectal, or other site-specific cancers except lung cancer.
  • Had no affect on women's risk of cancer death, except for lung cancer death.
  • Tended to lower women's risk of lung cancer. Lung cancer deaths were slightly lower -- by 30% -- in women who took low-dose aspirin.
  • In a separate report released last March, low-dose aspirin did not cut women's combined risk of heart attack and stroke. However for people who have had heart attacks, low-dose (81 milligrams-325 milligrams) aspirin is still recommended as a way to reduce risk of second heart attacks.

Subscribe to our newsletter
Sign up here to get the latest news, updates and special offers delivered directly to your inbox.
You can unsubscribe at any time

Leave A Reply

Your email address will not be published.