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Consumption of antioxidant supplements increases mortality rates
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
Taking dietary supplements containing antioxidants increases mortality in both patients with various diseases and healthy people. This is the conclusion reached by an international group of researchers led by Christian Gluud from the University Hospital of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Gllud and his colleagues from Italy and Serbia analyzed data from 78 studies involving almost 300,000 volunteers. About 80,000 of them suffered from diseases of the digestive, cardiovascular, excretory, nervous and endocrine systems, as well as eye and skin diseases.
More than 180,000 study participants received dietary supplements with antioxidants, including vitamins A, E and C, beta-carotene (provitamin A) and selenium, for an average of two years. The control group included 113,000 volunteers.
According to the results of the study, 11.7 percent of the first group died. In the control group, 10.2 percent of participants died. More pronounced differences in the proportion of deaths were obtained for specific supplements, in particular, for vitamin E (12 and 10.3 percent, respectively) and beta-carotene (13.8 and 11.1 percent). In the case of taking vitamins A and C, as well as selenium, the difference in mortality with the control group was statistically insignificant.