{"id":3379,"date":"2012-11-07T07:12:03","date_gmt":"2012-11-07T12:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/?p=3379"},"modified":"2012-11-07T07:12:03","modified_gmt":"2012-11-07T12:12:03","slug":"vitamins-and-the-department-of-bad-timing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/vitamins-and-the-department-of-bad-timing\/2012\/11\/07\/","title":{"rendered":"Vitamins and the Department of Bad Timing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that the election is over, we can get back to something that really<\/em> matters — namely vitamins, and specifically whether they really help people.<\/p>\n

Last month there was a large, well-done study<\/a> from Tanzania showing that mega-doses of vitamins not only didn’t help those HIV starting ART, but they actually were harmful — LFTs went up, and there was a non-significant trend towards more deaths among the sickest patients who got the vitamins.<\/p>\n

Granted, I’ve never been a fan of high-dose supplements, but given these results, and the fact that they cost a boatload of money, I came out pretty strongly against them.<\/a> Spend the money on real food — you know, the stuff we evolved as a species\u00a0to eat<\/em> — not the shiny capsules from GNC that come in plastic bottles with pseudoscientific labels.<\/p>\n

Then, that same day\u00a0I had fun blasting mega-vitamins, this study<\/a>\u00a0came out showing that a single multivitamin daily reduces the risk of cancer in men.<\/p>\n

And the papers are in the same journal. Jeeze.<\/p>\n

First, in my defense, it’s\u00a0high doses<\/em>\u00a0of vitamin that I really object to — the list of studies showing that mega-supplements do no good (and may do harm) is not short. Second, while this particular multivitamin study (part of the giant Physicians’ Health Study II)\u00a0showed a cancer prevention benefit, even the authors acknowledge that the effect size was small, and that cancer-related and overall mortality were similar. Third, this separate analysis<\/a> of that same study showed no benefit in prevention of cardiovascular disease.<\/p>\n

So for our patients wedded to taking something, let’s leave it as “take a daily multivitamin — if you must.”<\/p>\n

And by the way, Mitt, those Lyme Disease flyers<\/a> in Virginia didn’t do the trick<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that the election is over, we can get back to something that really matters — namely vitamins, and specifically whether they really help people. Last month there was a large, well-done study from Tanzania showing that mega-doses of vitamins not only didn’t help those HIV starting ART, but they actually were harmful — LFTs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,5,8,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care","category-hiv","category-infectious-diseases","category-patient-care","category-research"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}