Update on dietary antioxidants and cancer

Advances in diagnosis and treatment of cancer, as well as increased understanding of the mechanisms of the disease, have provided and will certainly continue to provide enormous benefit to affected individuals. At the same time, interventions that may prevent common cancers from developing in healthy people could, at least in theory, afford even greater benefits to society as a whole. The hypothesis that antioxidant vitamins might reduce cancer risk is based on a large body of both basic and human epidemiologic research. A large number of case-control and cohort studies provide remarkably consistent data suggesting that consumption of foods rich in antioxidant vitamins reduce risks of developing epithelial cancers. These data raise the question of a possible role of antioxidants, such as vitamins C and E, and beta carotene, in the primary prevention of cancer as well ar cardiovascular disease but do not provide a definitive answer. Despite the lack of clear benefit, there has been a rapid increase in the consumption of supplements of these micronutrients. Limited randomized trial data on the role of supplemental antioxidants are available. A number of randomized trials are currently underway designed to test the hypothesis that antioxidants prevent chronic diseases and to evaluate the long term safety of the widespread practice of supplementation. Well designed and well conducted large-scale randomized trials are necessary to provide a definitive positive or negative result on which public policy can be based, or a null result that is truly informative and that can then safely permit the rechanneling of already limited resources to other areas of research.