Daily HealthBeat Tip - June 27, 2007

No help for the colon

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Folic acid supplements can do wonders for some things. For instance, supplements can raise folate levels high enough to sharply reduce the risk of some birth defects that can develop very early in pregnancy.

But there’s something folic acid apparently cannot do – reduce the risk of new colon polyps, which can grow into cancer.

John Baron of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center – with colleagues from 10 other medical centers -- checked that by having about 1,000 people with polyps take supplements. The study  supported by the National Institutes of Health was in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

``We found that folic acid did not decrease the risk of colon polyps. In fact, in some analyses, we saw suggestions that folic acid might increase the risk of those polyps.’’ (eight seconds)

But the increased risk needs confirmation.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

Last revised: June, 27 2007