Vitamin E protects against liver cancer
Last reviewed: 16.10.2021
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The abundance of vitamin E in the diet can help reduce the likelihood of liver cancer.
Liver cancer is the third most common cause of cancer death in the world, the fifth most frequent type of cancer in men and the seventh in women. Almost 85% of cases occur in developing countries, with 54% only in China. In recent years, specialists have conducted several epidemiological studies to study the relationship between the intake of vitamin E and liver cancer, but their results were contradictory.
In the course of the current work, scientists from the Shanghai Cancer Institute and the Medical School at the Shanghai Transport University (both China) analyzed data on 132,837 Chinese people who participated in the Shanghai Women's Health Study (1997-2000) and the Shanghai Men's Health Study (2002-2006 ). Each subject was interviewed to collect data on his eating habits. Then, the risks of developing liver cancer were compared among those who consumed a lot of vitamin E, and those in whose diet it was almost absent.
The participants included 267 patients with liver cancer (118 women and 149 men) who had this ailment diagnosed during the study.
The results showed that the intake of vitamin E with both food and food additives was associated with a reduced risk of developing liver cancer. This relationship was observed in healthy subjects, as well as in those suffering from this disease or who had liver cancer in a family history.