"People should be encouraged to eat a healthy diet with plenty of fruit and vegetables but there is no evidence that taking vitamin supplements will prevent heart disease or cancer." Dr Debbie Lawlor

In previous studies that had simply looked at dietary patterns or measured blood levels of vitamins and then compared disease occurrence between groups with different vitamins levels, the vitamins appeared to protect against a number of important diseases.  However, this type of study is not able to take account of all of the factors “ like early life housing conditions and lifestyles “ that affect both vitamin levels and also diseases like heart disease and cancers.

In trials where individuals were randomly allocated ™ (a process similar to tossing a die) to vitamin supplements or not, supplements which produced similar blood levels to those that were shown to be protective in the earlier studies did not protect individuals from heart disease or other diseases.  In this type of study the random allocation means that factors such as lifestyle can not confound the results. 

Dr Lawlor said: People should be encouraged to eat a healthy diet with plenty of fruit and vegetables and of course should take regular exercise and should not smoke, but there is no evidence that taking vitamin supplements will prevent heart disease or cancer.

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