This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Nutritional and Metabolic Disorders  • Nutrition/ Malnutrition  • Oncology  • Skin Cancer  • Dermatology  • Dermatologic Disorders  • Neoplasms  • Drug Therapy  • Adverse Effects  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Results of a Large Prospective Cohort Study

Maryam M. Asgari, MD, MPH; Sonia S. Maruti, MSc, ScD; Lawrence H. Kushi, ScD; Emily White, PhD

Arch Dermatol. 2009;145(8):879-882.

Objective  To examine whether antioxidant supplement use is associated with melanoma risk in light of recently published data from the Supplementation in Vitamins and Mineral Antioxidants (SUVIMAX) study, which reported a 4-fold higher melanoma risk in women randomized to receive a supplement with nutritionally appropriate doses of antioxidants.

Design  Population-based prospective study (Vitamins and Lifestyle [VITAL] cohort).

Setting  Western Washington State.

Participants  A total of 69 671 men and women who self-reported (1) intake of multivitamins and supplemental antioxidants, including selenium and beta carotene, during the past 10 years and (2) melanoma risk factors on a baseline questionnaire.

Main Outcome Measure  Incident melanoma identified through linkage to the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) cancer registry.

Results  Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to estimate multivariable relative risks (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for multivitamin, supplemental selenium, and supplemental beta carotene use. After adjusting for melanoma risk factors, we did not detect a significant association between multivitamin use and melanoma risk in women (RR, 1.14; 95% CI, 0.78-1.66) or in men (RR, 1.09; 95% CI, 0.83-1.43). Moreover, we did not observe increased melanoma risk with the use of supplemental beta carotene (RR, 0.87; 95% CI, 0.48-1.56) or selenium (RR, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.69-1.41) at doses comparable with those of the SUVIMAX study.

Conclusion  Antioxidants taken in nutritional doses do not seem to increase melanoma risk.

Author Affiliations: Division of Research, Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Oakland (Drs Asgari and Kushi); Department of Dermatology, University of California at San Francisco (Dr Asgari); Department of Epidemiology, University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle (Drs Maruti and White); and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Cancer Prevention Unit, Seattle (Drs Maruti and White).

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?