Vitamin E pills reduced prostate cancer risk by a third and the disease's death rate by 41% in a study of thousands of smokers, researchers report. The same study, in Finland, found that a form of vitamin A had no effect on reducing cancer.

"There may be a pattern developing of some kind of broad cancer preventive effect from vitamin E," said Dr. Demetrius Albanes, a National Cancer Institute researcher and co-author of the study.