Multivitamins taken regularly over a long period of time may lower the risk of death from heart disease by 16 percent, according to a new study out of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center at the University of Washington. The study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, also showed that daily supplements of vitamin E over a 10-year period were tied to a 28 percent decrease in the risk of death from heart disease.

The new study goes against two older studies, one of them a much-debated 2004 study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine that said multivitamins—and vitamin E in particular—actually increased the risk of “all-cause mortality.” The other prior study, published in 2007 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, said vitamin A, vitamin E, and beta-carotene could increase the risk of death by as much as 16 percent.

The new Washington study found that in reference to causes of death other than heart disease, multivitamins did not decrease the risk. It also showed that multivitamins and vitamin E were not linked to an increase in cancer deaths, and that in fact vitamins E and C were actually associated with small decreases in the risk of overall mortality.

The researchers based their findings on questionnaires self-administered by over 77,000 Washington State residents between the ages of 50 and 76. The results were correlated with 10-year use of multivitamins and vitamins C and E, and with death from cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Roughly 35 percent of the U.S. adult population regularly takes multivitamins, according to a recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.