Purpose: Multivitamin supplement is commonly used among older adults in the United States. Evidence on multivitamin use and prostate cancer risk is limited, and some suggested potential risk for clinically important subtypes of cancer.
Materials and methods: A total of 48,137 men from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study were followed from 1986 to 2017. Multivitamin use and frequency were self-reported at baseline and updated biennially. Clinical features of prostate cancer included advanced, lethal and high-grade outcomes. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate multivariable hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of multivitamin use and incidence of prostate cancer.
Results: The median followup for men without prostate cancer diagnosis or death was 30.7 years. We documented 7,108 incident prostate cancer cases including 564 advanced and 1,065 lethal. Overall, we observed a null association between multivitamin use and risk of prostate cancer. Compared to never-users, men who used multivitamin 10 or more tablets per week had similar risk of advanced (HR: 1.14, 95% CI: 0.77-1.70, Ptrend=0.46) or lethal (HR: 1.07, 95% CI: 0.80-1.44, Ptrend=0.59) prostate cancer, and multivitamin use of 15 years or more was not associated with risk of advanced (HR: 1.10, 95% CI: 0.80-1.50, Ptrend=0.46) or lethal (HR: 1.04, 95% CI: 0.83-1.31, Ptrend=0.13) prostate cancer.
Conclusions: Regular or long-duration multivitamin use among older, generally well-nourished men was not associated with either increased or lower risk of overall or aggressive prostate cancer.
Keywords: cohort studies; dietary supplements; prostatic neoplasms.