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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2025 Jul 1.
Published in final edited form as: J Urol. 2024 Apr 24;212(1):228–229. doi: 10.1097/JU.0000000000003937

Survival After Selenium and Vitamin E Supplementation: Long-Term Followup of the Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial

Cathee Till 1, Phyllis J Goodman 1, Catherine Tangen 1, M Scott Lucia 2, Ian M Thompson Jr 3,4
PMCID: PMC11218905  NIHMSID: NIHMS1978589  PMID: 38657020

To the Editor:

It has been suggested that 20–40% of human longevity is genetically-determined, leaving over half the etiology potentially due to various exposures.1 Among potential contributors to longevity are agents that mitigate oxidative stress. Oxidative stress may play a role in a host of diseases including cancer, atherosclerosis, and neurodegenerative diseases.2 Two of the most important antioxidants are Vitamin E, and selenium, an essential component of glutathione peroxidases and thioredoxin reductases.3

The Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial (SELECT) randomized men without prostate cancer to selenium (200 ug/d from L-selenomethionine) and placebo, vitamin E (400 IU/d of all rac-α-tocopherol acetate) and placebo, both agents, or placebo, with a prostate cancer primary endpoint. The primary analysis, after a median follow-up of 5.46 years (range 4.17–7.33 years), included 34,887 men and found no impact of selenium on prostate cancer but a significant increased risk of prostate cancer with vitamin E supplementation.4

To explore the potential impact of these potent antioxidants on the aggregate diseases associated with ageing, we submitted records for 29,207 SELECT participants (92.6% of those last known to be alive) to the National Death Index for matching on common social security number and/or full name to determine overall survival over 15 years. Time was indexed at registration to SELECT, until death by any cause or last date known to be alive. With a total of 439,278 person-years (median of 14.6 years) of follow-up, we found virtually-identical overall survival of all four randomized groups of men. (Figure 1) These results do not support the utility of supplementation with either micronutrient to improve longevity.

Figure 1.

Figure 1

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"SELECT Overall Survival by Treatment Group

Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health (NIH) U10CA37429 (C.M. Tangen, I.M. Thompson)

References

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