SUNDAY, Sept. 29, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- The Cancer Care Center at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Ill. is seeking volunteers to be part of the largest-ever prostate cancer prevention clinical trial.
The international trial is called SELECT - Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial. It's sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and will examine whether either vitamin E or selenium protects against prostate cancer. It's the second most common kind of cancer in men.
Previous research suggests selenium and vitamin E may reduce prostate cancer risk by 60 and 30 percent, respectively.
Advocate Lutheran General Hospital is one of the research sites across the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico that will enroll 32,000 men for SELECT. There are 13,951 men currently enrolled and the remainder of participants will be signed up over the next four years.
Healthy men aged 55 and older (50 and older for higher-risk black men) are eligible for the study.
Study participants will be followed for seven to 12 years, depending on when they enter the trial. They'll be assigned to one of four groups. One group will receive 200 micrograms of selenium daily, plus a placebo that looks like vitamin E. Another group will receive 400 milligrams of vitamin E daily, along with a placebo that looks like selenium. A third group will receive both selenium and vitamin E. The fourth group will receive two placebos.
The men will not have to change their diets, but they'll be required to stop taking any supplements they buy themselves that contain vitamin E or selenium.
If you'd like to join the study at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital, phone the clinical research department at 847-723-8252.
More information
For more information about SELECT, go to the National Cancer Institute.
