So far, the relationship between vitamin B and lung cancer did not seem entirely clear. A study dated 2010 and carried out by researchers from the International Agency for Research on Cancer, located in Lyon (France), pointed out that people with high levels of vitamin B in the blood seemed to have a lower risk of developing cancer of the lung – even in the case of smokers.
However, these days new research has just come to light that suggests that ingesting, for long periods of time, high doses of vitamin B6 and vitamin B12 – usually through supplements designed to increase energy and improve fitness. efficiency of our metabolism – could be associated, in men (apparently, not so in women), with twice the risk of suffering from lung cancer than in the case of men who do not take these supplements.
And the risk would be even higher in male smokers who ingest more than 20 milligrams (mg) of vitamin B6 per day, for a very long period of time – at this dose, their chances of developing lung cancer would be, always according to this study , three times higher than in the case of non-users of these supplements – or 55 micrograms (mcg) of B12 – in this case, the possibilities would be multiplied by four.
The recommended daily dose
The recommended daily dose for an adult person is around 1.3 mg of vitamin B6 and 2.4 mcg of B12, and these are found naturally in many foods (such as fish, meat, chickpeas, cheese, eggs, milk, cereals …). But there are people who also ingest them through supplements, often marketed in pill form and containing much higher doses than recommended.
Recently published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology , this is the first prospective study (longitudinal study that begins to be carried out in the present but whose data are not analyzed until after a certain time, already in the future) that analyzes the effects that it could have on the development of lung cancer taking, for a long time, high doses of supplements of B6 and B12.
The research has been carried out by American epidemiologists from the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital, and the Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC-James). and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Experts from the University of Taiwan, based in Taipei, have also collaborated.
The study was based on information obtained from more than 77,000 people , including the dose of these vitamins they ingested. All of them, between 50 and 76 years old and from the state of Washington (USA), were subjected to a follow-up of more than a decade by the researchers.
To carry out this new research, the experts used statistical techniques that considered numerous factors , such as the personal smoking history of each of the participants, their age, race, education, weight and height, alcohol consumption, your personal history of cancer or chronic lung disease, family history of lung cancer, or use of anti-inflammatories.
“Our data show that taking high doses of B6 and B12 over a very long period of time could contribute to lung cancer incidence rates in male smokers. That is certainly a concern worthy of further evaluation,” he says. one of the researchers, Theodore Brasky.
Likewise, experts point out that, when they speak of taking high doses of these vitamins, they refer to doses that are much higher than those usually included in most multivitamins.
