In Breast Cancer Awareness Month, a series of reports will be published here to help readers to understand breast cancer, prevention and treatment.

Saturday Oct 5, 2013 (foodconsumer.org) -- Taking vitamin C as a dietary supplement pre-diagnosis may help survival in women diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, according to a new study published in British Journal of  Cancer. 

H.R. Harris  fromv Division of Nutritional Epidemiology, The National Institute for Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden and colleagues conducted the study and found patients with invasive breast cancer who took high amounts of vitamin C as a dietary supplement prior to diagnosis were 25% less likely to die from breast cancer and 16% less likely to die from all causes, compared with those who had a lower intake.

Specifically, women in the highest quartile of prediagnosis vitamin C intake were at 25% reduced risk for breast cancer death compared with those in the lowest quartile of vitamin C intake.  Also a borderline significant association was found between vitamin C intake and total mortality, that is, those in the highest intake of vitamin C were 16% less likely to die from all causes. 

However, taking vitamin C in a dose of 1 gram per day p ost-diaganosis was not associated with survival from invasive breast cancer.

The researchers concluded "dietary vitamin C intake before breast cancer diagnosis may be associated with breast cancer survival. In addition, post-diagnosis vitamin C supplementation at the level observed in our population was not associated with survival." (JD)