Vitamin E may not extend life

TEL AVIV, Israel, Jan. 1 (UPI) -- Israeli researchers say giving everyone the anti-oxidant vitamin E may not be a good thing.

The researchers at the Tel Aviv University Sackler School of Medicine in Israel say their study finds average quality-adjusted longevity was 0.30 of a year shorter in treated people than in untreated people.

"This, of course, does not mean that everybody consuming vitamin E shortens their life by almost four months. But on average, the quality-adjusted longevity is lower for vitamin-treated people. This says something significant," study co-researcher Ilya Pinchuk said in a statement. "We've now concluded that going to the grocery or to a health food store to buy vitamin E supplements, for the most part, won't do you good. In some cases it can do harm."

Pinchuk and colleagues examined data for more than 300,000 subjects in the United States, Europe and Israel to determine quality-adjusted life years. For instance, a person healthy during the first 10 out of the 20 years of the study scored 10 for the first 10 years but after being struck by a stroke and becoming dependent on others scored 5 for the next 10 years for a total of quality-adjusted life years.

The study is reported in the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology.