2023-05-16 03:00:16
Vitamin D could reduce cancer mortality by 12 percent – provided the vitamin is taken daily. German researchers have now come to this conclusion.
Vitamin D deficiency is widespread worldwide and is particularly common in cancer patients. Averaged over the year, the vitamin D blood levels in around 15 percent of German adults are below the threshold for a pronounced Vitamin D Deficiency. In a Study an colon cancer patients on the other hand, researchers diagnosed vitamin D3 deficiency in 59 percent of the participants, which was also associated with an unfavorable prognosis.
Reassessment of known results
Possible effects of vitamin D supplementation and the development or prognosis of cancer have already been examined in numerous studies. “According to current studies, vitamin D3 intake probably does not protect against developing cancer, but could reduce the probability of dying from cancer. However, previous studies on cancer mortality have provided very different results and we were interested in the reasons for this,” says Ben Schöttker, epidemiologist at the German Cancer Research Center. “By re-evaluating all previous studies on the subject, we wanted to help achieve reliable results on this issue, which is so relevant to public health.”
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To the effectiveness of Vitamin D3 To investigate cancer mortality in the population and the survival of cancer patients, Schöttker and his team carried out a systematic literature search in which 14 studies with a total of almost 105,000 participants were identified. The researchers only considered studies of the highest quality, with participants randomly assigned to the vitamin D3 arm or the placebo arm.
A little every day
No statistically significant results were found in the summary of all 14 studies. However, if the studies were divided according to whether vitamin D3 was taken daily in low doses or as a rarely administered, high single dose, there was a big difference. In the four studies with the high single doses, there was no effect on cancer mortality. In the summary of the ten studies with daily dosing, however, the researchers determined a statistically significant reduction in cancer mortality of twelve percent.
“We observed this 12 percent reduction in cancer mortality after untargeted vitamin D3 administration to people with and without vitamin D deficiency. We can therefore assume that the effect is significantly higher for those people who actually have a vitamin D deficiency,” says Schöttker. He explains the better effectiveness of the daily doses by the more regular bioavailability of the active ingredient, the hormone 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D, which only occurs through reactions of the Vitamin D in the body and can presumably inhibit tumor growth.
Older people benefit
A more detailed analysis of the studies with daily intake also found that people aged 70 and over benefited the most from vitamin D3 therapy. In addition, the effect was most evident when vitamin D intake was started before the cancer was diagnosed.
Hermann Brenner, epidemiologist and prevention expert at the DKFZ, adds: “This work underlines the great potential of vitamin D3 administration in the prevention of cancer deaths. Regular intake in low doses is associated with almost negligible risk and very little cost.”
This article is based on a press release of the German Cancer Research Center. We have the original publication for you here and linked in the text.
Image source: Victor Freitas, unsplash
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