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Older men who smoke shouldn't
bother to take common "cold fighting" vitamins in an attempt
to ward off respiratory illness, new study findings suggest.
The investigators found no
protective association between dietary vitamin C or E or beta-carotene
and the incidence of self-reported colds.
The researchers evaluated data
from a study of nearly 22,000 male smokers that investigated whether supplementing
their diets with 50 units of vitamin E and 20 mg of beta-carotene daily
had any effect on whether they developed cancer.
Past studies have found some
evidence that vitamin C
can help guard against the common cold, and that vitamin E may strengthen
the immune system in older people.
Although vitamins C and E may
affect susceptibility to respiratory infections in restricted groups of
subjects under special circumstances, the results of the present analysis
and the findings of several other studies indicate that such subpopulations
are not large in the Western countries.
Epidemiology January 2002;13:32-37
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