How vitamin E supplements may speed up lung cancer

VITAMIN E and other common supplements fuel lung cancer in smokers, researchers fear.

They say that rather than preventing tumours, antioxidant pills may speed their growth.

Vitamin E and other antioxidants are credited with boosting health by mopping up harmful molecules called free radicals.

But it is thought that if cancer has already started to develop, they may actually feed the disease by switching off the body’s natural defences.

When researchers at the University of Gothenburg gave vitamin E to mice in the very early stages of lung cancer, the disease spread more quickly and the animals died twice as fast. Experiments on human cells confirmed the finding.

A second antioxidant, a drug used to treat smoking-related lung conditions, had a similar effect.

The researchers advised that the vitamin and other antioxidants should be ‘used with caution’ by smokers and people with smoking-related lung conditions.

The warning, in the journal Science Translational Medicine, is unlikely to apply to ‘superfoods’ such as blueberries as they would have to be eaten in huge amounts to provide the levels of antioxidants contained in supplements.

Cancer Research said: ‘A healthy, balanced diet should provide all the nutrients you need without taking supplements.’