This information is so important, and has received so little attention, that I amposting it in its entirey here without further comment.

Dr. Ralph Moss, of the Newsletter THE MOSS REPORT at www.cancerdecisions.com writes a carefully structured last-word-on-the subject report.  He has a more detailed report available for purchase here: https://webssl.cancerdecisions.com/list/optin.php?form_id=29

 NEW STUDY CLARIFIES ROLE OF ANTIOXIDANTS
 DURING RADIATION TREATMENT

An important paper on the interaction of antioxidants and radiation
therapy was recently published in the International Journal of Cancer.
Interestingly, despite the significance of its findings, this study has
received virtually zero attention from the scientific community or the
media.

 As background, in April 2005, Isabelle Bairati, MD, PhD, and her
colleagues at the Hôtel-Dieu de Quebec Research Centre and the Universite
Laval completed a ten-year study on the interaction of antioxidants and
radiation therapy. This was hailed as the first placebo-controlled,
double-blind, randomized trial assessing the effect of supplementation with
antioxidant vitamins during radiation therapy. The study concluded that
supplements of synthetic beta-carotene (30 mg per day) or alpha tocopherol
(400 IU per day) had a harmful effect on cancer patients. In particular, the
authors claimed that the cancer recurrence rate was 40 percent higher among
patients who had been randomly assigned to the supplementation arm of the
trial. They therefore called on patients and physicians to exert caution in
using antioxidants until new evidence could be provided by future trials.

 Kedar Prasad, PhD, and other proponents of the concurrent use of
antioxidants during cancer treatment criticized the Bairati paper. They were
disappointed that Bairati and colleagues had used ordinary alpha tocopherol
as their choice of vitamin E when Prasad's previous work had shown that it
was not just alpha tocopherol but alpha tocopherol succinate that had the
anticancer efficacy. They also felt that natural forms of the vitamin were
more effective than synthetic, drug store-type vitamins. But, by and large,
the medical world accepted the Bairati trial as definitive proof that
antioxidants interfered with radiation therapy. Word spread like wildfire in
oncology circles, confirming a long-held belief that antioxidants interfered
with standard cancer treatments such as radiation and chemotherapy. The take
away message, as stated in a Universite Laval press release, was that
"Supplements May Speed Up Development of Cancer." Advocates of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) were confounded by this large and impressive study.

 But now the other shoe has dropped.

 In December 2007, Dr. Bairati and her Quebec colleagues published a major
modification of their previous conclusions. Further analysis revealed, they
said, that the danger of synthetic antioxidants was limited to one
particular sub-population: cigarette smokers - specifically, those who
continued to smoke during radiation treatment. The authors analyzed the
outcome in 540 patients who had been given radiation for head and neck
cancers. During the follow-up period, 119 patients had a recurrence of their
disease and 179 died. Smokers were the group with the worst prognosis.
However, astonishingly, smoking in the period leading up to or following
radiation therapy did not modify the effects of the two supplements. It was
only smoking during the course of radiation therapy that led to a
statistically significant increase in the risk of a recurrence. It was a
large enough increase to skew the statistics for the group as a whole,
leading to the erroneous conclusion that antioxidants interfered with
radiotherapy in the general patient population.

 Statistically, increased risk is generally expressed as a "hazard ratio"
(abbreviated HR). In this study, current smokers had an HR of 2.41 for
recurrence, in other words more than double the chance of a recurrence
compared to the rest of the patient population. The HR for death from any
cause was a similar 2.26. But the hazard ratio for dying of their initial
head and neck cancer was a whopping 3.38 in patients who got radiation,
smoked and also received a single synthetic antioxidant.

 "These results could best be explained by the hypothesis that the combined
exposures reduced the efficacy of radiation therapy," Bairati and her
colleagues now say. "Particular attention should be devoted to prevent
patients from both smoking and taking antioxidant supplements during
radiation therapy" (Meyer 2007).

 According to the National Cancer Institute, 85 percent of head and neck
cancers are linked to tobacco use. (Alcohol use further exacerbates this
trend.) This has been widely known for years, and so it is shocking that
there are still people so hopelessly addicted to tobacco that they not only
continue to smoke after they've been diagnosed with head and neck cancer but
continue to smoke right through their radiation therapy. It was in this
subset of particularly unhealthy individuals that antioxidants were
associated with an increased risk of disease progression. As Bairati and
colleagues suggest, such individuals should definitely not compound their
problems by then taking a synthetic antioxidant.

But the more important lesson for patients and practitioners is that
antioxidants do NOT generally interfere with the effects of radiation
therapy, as was previously suggested. They do NOT increase the risk of a
recurrence, of death from head and neck cancer, or of overall mortality in
the average patient. In this updated study, the harmful effect of synthetic
antioxidants was entirely limited to those relatively few tobacco-addicted
patients who continued to smoke during their radiation therapy. Thus, the
major premise underpinning oncologists' condemnation of antioxidants during
radiation therapy has crumbled, although few seem to have noticed so far.