WASHINGTON (Reuters) – People who take vitamin supplements are just as likely as those who don't to develop lung cancer, and vitamin E supplements may actually slightly raise the risk, researchers said on Friday.

Their study involved 77,721 people in Washington state ages 50 to 76, tracking their use over the prior decade of supplemental multivitamins, vitamin C, vitamin E and folate to see if this would offer protection from lung cancer.

None of the vitamins looked at in the study was tied to a reduced risk of lung cancer.

In fact, people who took high doses of vitamin E, especially smokers, had a small but statistically significant elevated risk, the researchers said.

"If you could find some sort of magic pill — a pill you could take once a day to decrease your risk — that would be ideal. But we obviously, unfortunately, didn't find that in our study," lead researcher Dr. Christopher Slatore of the University of Washington in Seattle said in a telephone interview.

The people in the study were followed for four years and 521 developed lung cancer, the vast majority of them smokers or former smokers, it was reported in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

"Some estimates are that around 50 percent of the American public takes supplemental vitamins of some sort. There's been a lot of thought about: 'do these supplements actually prevent chronic diseases like lung cancer, other cancers, heart disease?'" Slatore said.