Supplements: The vitamin that may ‘significantly’ raise cancer risk when taken ‘long term’

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The body needs a variety of vitamins in order to function. One of the most important is vitamin B12, which helps keep your body’s blood and nerve cells healthy and helps make DNA. However, how you consume the vitamin may determine its benefit and risk. That’s the takeaway of a study examining the effects of supplementing with vitamin B12.

The worrying conclusion of the study, published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention journal, suggests that the “long-term effect” of supplementation with both folic acid and vitamin B12 may hike your risk of cancer.

Folic acid is the man-made version of the vitamin folate (also known as vitamin B9). Like B12, folate helps the body make healthy red blood cells and is found in certain foods.

However, the health benefits may be cancelled out when supplementing with these vitamins over the course of a number of years, suggests the study.

The aim of the study was to assess the long-term effect of supplementation with both folic acid and vitamin B12 on the incidence of overall cancer and on colorectal cancer in the B Vitamins for the Prevention of Osteoporotic Fractures (B-PROOF) trial.

The B-PROOF trial is a randomised controlled trial on vitamin B12 and folic acid supplementation on fracture risk in older persons.

The study was designed to assess the effect of two to three years of daily supplementation with folic acid (400 μg) and vitamin B12 (500 μg) versus placebo on fracture incidence.

Information on cancer incidence was obtained from the Netherlands cancer registry.

The researchers found that “allocation to B vitamins was associated with a higher risk of overall cancer”.

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What’s more, B vitamins were “significantly” associated with a higher risk of colorectal cancer, they reported.

Colorectal cancer starts in the colon or the rectum. These cancers can also be called colon cancer or rectal cancer, depending on where they start.

“Folic acid and vitamin B12 supplementation was associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer,” the researchers concluded.

The finding builds on previous evidence, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Heart patients in Norway who took folic acid and vitamin B12 supplements were found to have a slightly increased risk for cancer and death from all causes, compared to heart patients who did not take the supplements.

Study researcher Marta Ebbing, MD, of Norway’s Haukeland University Hospital and colleagues analysed data from two studies that included almost 7,000 heart patients treated with B vitamin supplements or placebo for an average of three and one-half years between 1998 and 2005.

The original intent of the studies was to determine if taking vitamin B supplements improved cardiovascular outcomes, which it didn’t do.

During treatment, blood folate levels among patients who took 0.8 milligrams a day of folic acid plus 0.4 milligrams a day of vitamin B12 increased more than sixfold.

The patients were followed for an average of three years after supplementation ended, during which time 341 patients who took folic acid and B12 (10 percent) and 288 patients who did not (8.4 percent) were diagnosed with cancer.

Folic acid and B12 supplementation was associated with a 21 percent increased risk for cancer, a 38 percent increased risk for dying from the disease, and an 18 percent increase in deaths from all causes.

This finding was mainly driven by an increase in lung cancer incidence among the folic acid and B12-treated patients.

Seventy-five (32 percent) of the 236 cancer-related deaths among the study participants were due to lung cancer, and the cancer incidence among the study group was 25 percent higher than in the population of Norway as a whole.

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