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FRIDAY, Sept. 14 (HealthDay News) -- Men who've been adding vitamin E or the tomato nutrient lycopene to their diets to cut their risk of prostate cancer may need to think again.

According to a new study, neither carotenoids (such as lycopene), retinol, nor tocopherols (forms of vitamin E) appear to reduce the odds of prostate malignancy -- findings that are in line with two other recent publications.

"Our overall findings are null," said lead researcher Timothy Key, deputy director of the Cancer Research UK Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford, U.K.

"This large study does not support the hypothesis that consuming large amounts of these nutrients will reduce prostate cancer," he added. "That is disappointing, but that is the overall message."

The findings are published in the September issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

His team examined the effect of the blood levels of 10 micronutrients on the risk of developing prostate cancer for almost 2,000 males from eight European countries.

The research, which the authors call "the largest prospective study to date of plasma carotenoids, retinol, tocopherols, and prostate cancer risk," was part of the EPIC (European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition) study, which includes more than half a million men and women.

The authors did find evidence to suggest that, once a cancer forms, high levels of lycopene (or of carotenoids in general, including lycopene) may reduce by about 60 percent the risk of the tumor progressing to an advanced-stage prostate cancer. Carotenoids appeared to have no effect on the rate of localized, earlier-stage disease, however.

According to Dr. Peter Scardino, head of the Prostate Cancer Program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the developed world. A Western male, he said, has about a 42 percent risk of developing cancerous cells in his prostate over his lifetime, a 16 percent risk of being diagnosed with the disease, and about a three percent risk of dying as a result. In other words, nearly one-quarter of Western males have a subclinical form of prostate cancer, which will never progress to more advanced disease.

Stopping progression is crucial. According to Scardino, for those whose disease does progress, the risk of death is much higher -- nearly 50 percent.

"I think it's an important study," Scardino said. That lycopene and bulk carotenoids reduced the risk of progressing to advanced disease without impacting the risk of developing prostate cancer overall, he said, "suggests maybe these micronutrients are not as important in [stopping] carcinogenesis as they are in [slowing] progression of a very small early tumor to one that becomes invasive and larger and develops the ability to metastasize."

"The study provides supportive evidence that lycopene and the carotenoids may have an effect on delaying the progression of prostate cancer, so, from that point of view, it is an interesting study," Scardino added.

But Alan Kristal, associate head of the Cancer Prevention Program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, remained more skeptical. Though he called the study "well-executed," Kristal noted, for instance, that the authors were unable to control for prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing among the men. These blood tests often detect clinically irrelevant tumors, he explained.

"You can never do an observational study of prostate cancer without rigorously controlling for whether or not the person got PSA screening," Kristal said. "The more times you take the test, the more likely you are to get the disease."

He also noted that the finding for lycopene contradicts a report published in May in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention. That study did account for PSA testing, and it found no effect of lycopene whatsoever on prostate cancer risk -- including the risk of advanced disease.

"To my mind, that study is definitive," said Kristal. "It's a big study, extremely well executed, properly analyzed, and not biased by PSA screening."

A review of lycopene's effect on cancer by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, published in July in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, likewise found "no credible evidence to support an association between lycopene intake and a reduced risk of prostate, lung, colorectal, gastric, breast, ovarian, endometrial, or pancreatic cancer and very limited evidence to support an association between tomato consumption and reduced risks of prostate, ovarian, gastric, and pancreatic cancers," according to that study's authors.

So, with tomatoes, ketchup and pizza sauce crossed off the list of prostate-protecting foods, Key and others continue the search. Kristal, for instance, is on the executive committee of a randomized trial examining the effects of selenium and/or vitamin E on prostate cancer risk in 35,000 men. Results are expected in 2012, he said.

Said Key, "I am optimistic we will find something. This paper is an important piece of work, but it doesn't look like this is the answer."

More information

For more on vitamins and cancer, visit the American Cancer Society  .

WEDNESDAY, July 25 (HealthDay News) -- Intensifying the dose of anticancer drugs can cure a large majority of men with testicular cancer after first-line chemotherapy fails, Indiana University physicians report.

"This was a regimen established by our group over 10 years ago, and now we show that it is applicable to all testicular cancer patients," said study senior author Dr. Rafat Abonour, associate dean for clinical research at the university's school of medicine.

The new findings are published in the July 26 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

That report is "testimony to the dedication and leadership of Dr. Larry Einhorn," Abonour said. Einhorn is lead author on the study and holds several titles at Indiana, most notably the Lance Armstrong Professor of Medicine -- a position that was established after the Tour de France bicycling champ was cured of his testicular cancer at the center.

According to Abonour, Einhorn led the way in establishing the value of drugs such as cisplatin in the treatment of testicular cancer decades ago and has worked steadily at expanding their use and value.

From 7,000 to 8,000 cases of the cancer are reported in the United States each year. The overall cure rate is 90 percent for the first round of treatment, but there is a subset of more deadly metastatic cases where the cancer has spread to other parts of the body. About 30 percent of those patients suffer relapses and require further treatment.

The journal report describes the results of what it calls "salvage chemotherapy" in 184 such men. The researchers report that a course of treatment centering on high dosages of anticancer drugs led 116 of them to complete cancer remission over an average follow-up of four years. Even among a subset of 49 men for whom two or more previous rounds of treatment had failed, almost half (22 men) were found to be free of cancer four years later.

"The take-home message is that continuous effort to provide treatment is effective," Abonour said.

Cures are possible, because most testicular cancers are unusually sensitive to anticancer drugs, explained Dr. George Bosl, chairman of the department of medicine at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

Most of those malignancies occur in "germ" cells, where sperm is produced. "The major point of this report is that if a young man with a germ cell tumor undergoes chemotherapy and if the disease remains afterward, very high doses of chemotherapy can cure a substantial fraction of those patients," Bosl said.

Unfortunately, the lessons learned from the treatment of testicular cancer may not extend to other malignancies, he said, "because germ cell tumors are different from other cancers, where curative chemotherapy in the first line of treatment is hard to come by." It is not yet clear why germ cells are so much more sensitive to anti-cancer drugs, Bosl said.

More information

You can learn more about testicular cancer from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center  .

THURSDAY, March 1 (HealthDay News) -- Having just under a glass of wine a day cuts men's risk of dying from cardiovascular problems and all other causes and may help them live years longer, Dutch researchers report.

"Consumers who already drink should do so lightly, 1 to 2 glasses per day, and preferably drink wine," advises study co-author Marga Ocke, a researcher at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in Bilthoven, The Netherlands.

Ocke and her colleagues presented the research at the American Heart Association's Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention in Orlando, Fla..

Many other studies have shown that light to moderate alcohol intake is linked with a lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease in men and women, but whether one type of alcoholic beverage is better than another has been debated.

Ocke's team evaluated 1,373 men, all part of the Zutphen Study, who were born between 1900 and 1920 and surveyed in detail about alcohol consumption seven times over 40 years. Zutphen is the industrial town in the eastern Netherlands where the men all lived.

The participants were followed until they died or until their final interview, taken in mid-2000. They were asked about their drinking habits, dietary habits, their body mass index (BMI), smoking habits, and whether they had suffered heart attack, stroke, diabetes or cancer.

Alcohol consumption statistics were adjusted to account for other risk factors.

Compared to no drinking, light alcohol intake was linked with a 36 percent lower risk of death from all causes and a 34 percent lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease in particular. "Light" drinking was defined as less than or equal to 20 grams a day of alcohol (one glass of alcoholic beverage contains 10 grams of alcohol).

The reduced risk associated with wine drinking was greater than that associated with other alcoholic beverages. Those who drank about 1.5 ounces of wine -- about half a glass -- long term, had a 40 percent lower rate of death from all causes and a 48 percent lower incidence of death from cardiovascular disease, compared to non-wine drinkers.

Wine drinkers in the study had a life expectancy that was nearly four years longer compared to the abstainers. And wine drinkers lived, on average, more than two years longer than drinkers of either beer or hard liquor. Overall, men who drank a little alcohol of any type over the long term (less than or equal to 20 grams daily) lived 1.6 years longer than teetotalers, the Dutch team found.

It was difficult to tell whether the type of wine -- red or white -- made a difference. "In the present study, we didn't divide wine drinkers into red or white, but 70 percent of all wine consumed was red wine," Ocke said.

Ocke conceded that studies such as this have gone back and forth about which beverage is best, but she believes her study may have extra credibility. Most studies, she said, assume that drinking patterns are relatively constant. But in real life, patterns change.

In their study, Ocke's team found that the number of alcohol users nearly doubled from 45 percent in 1960 to 85 percent in the 2000 survey. Consumption patterns varied, too, which her study took into account.

Even so, Ocke said that more studies are needed to verify the results.

The researchers stressed that they only uncovered an association between light drinking and healthier, longer lives -- it does not prove that the drinking was the cause of that boost in health. Still, they speculate that the alcohol might increase so-called "good" cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or it might help reduce blood clotting linked to stroke.

The new study is "more comprehensive" than previous research, said Matt Kaeberlein, assistant professor of pathology at the University of Washington, Seattle, School of Medicine. The group studied was large, he added, which also lends credibility. "It gives you confidence in the statistics," he said.

Another study presented at the same conference had good news for nonsmoking coffee drinkers.

The study, by a team from Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland, Calif., evaluated more than 127,00 people who came in for exams from 1978 to 1985. Nearly 59,000 had never smoked. Researchers then looked at the more than 8,300 people hospitalized for coronary artery disease.

They found a higher cardiovascular risk for heavy coffee drinkers who smoked or used to smoke. Former and current smokers who were heavy coffee drinkers -- six cups a day or more -- had almost a 50 percent higher risk of coronary artery disease, they noted.

Coffee drinking was not associated with a risk of coronary artery disease in nonsmokers, the researchers said.

More information

To learn more about the health benefits of red wine, visit the American Heart Association  .