Objective: To examine how widely cancer patients use vitamins, trace elements, and herbal products.
Methods: The Health and Social Support Study (HeSSup) population consisted of a stratified random sample drawn from the Finnish Population Register in four age groups: 20-24, 30-34, 40-44, and 50-54 years. The survey was carried out by postal questionnaire during 1998, with a response rate of 40.0%. Altogether, 19 626 individuals returned the follow-up questionnaire during 2003, a response rate of 75.8%. The sample comprised 167 individuals diagnosed with malignant cancer from 1998 to 2002 according to the Finnish Cancer Registry. Respondents in 2003 were asked about their use of vitamins, trace elements, or herbal products during the last year. Four randomly selected age- and sex-matched controls for comparison were selected for every cancer patient.
Results: One in three among both cancer patients and controls had not used vitamins, trace elements, or herbal products at all. In this respect, there were no statistically significant differences between cancer patients and their respective controls.
Conclusion: If the use of these products is useless, cancer patients act as reasonable as the population in general. If their use is generally recommended for supplementary therapy, cancer patients do not follow recommendations.