Soon after the two studies that discounted the helpfulness of vitamin B, folic acid, vitamin D and calcium supplements for cancer prevention, now U.S researchers report that even vitamin C and E supplements are not helpful to avoid cancer.

The same researchers have recently reported that vitamin C and E supplements are not beneficial to prevent even heart disease.

Dr. Howard Sesso (one of the study’s authors), who is an assistant professor of medicine in the division of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, says: “We find no compelling evidence to take vitamin E or C at least in the context of two very common outcomes i.e. cardioprotection and chemoprevention.”

The findings will be presented at an American Academy of Cancer Research meeting in Washington, D.C. on Sunday.

15,000 male physicians were included in the study and they were randomly assigned to take a 500 milligram vitamin C supplement daily and 400 IU of vitamin E every other day or placebo. All participants of the study were over the age of 50 at the start of the study.

The researchers found that there were 1929 total cases of cancer that included 1,013 prostate cancers. Overall, in vitamin E group, total 490 men developed prostate cancer while there were 523 cases in the placebo group. According to Sesso, the difference wasn’t statistically significant. The researchers also noted similar sort of results for vitamin C.