Vitamin D deficiency is common and cancer risk is higher among those individuals with low vitamin D levels, according to an analysis of research which will be presented at a symposium by Donald L.
Trump, MD, President & CEO, Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) at the 2007 centennial meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), April 14-18, in Los Angeles, CA.
Epidemiological and basic science research, as well as clinical trials on the value of vitamin D as a preventive and therapeutic cancer agent, suggest that vitamin D deficiency may predispose some to the occurrence of a number of types of cancer and increase the likelihood of numerous complications known to occur in cancer patients.
Substantial epidemiological data indicate a link between low vitamin D levels and an increased risk of a number of cancers. While no large scale prospective trials have been conducted to test the hypothesis that aggressive vitamin D supplementation influences cancer risk, RPCI recently initiated a clinical trial of high-dose calcitriol (vitamin D) replacement in individuals with high risk of lung cancer in whom serial LIFE bronchoscopy and bronchial biopsies will be done.
Preclinical studies demonstrate the anti-proliferative and pro-differentiative effects of high-dose calcitriol treatment in in vitro and in vivo models. In the laboratory, there appears to be no tumor type that is uniquely sensitive to vitamin D treatment – leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma and solid tumor models are all sensitive, which speaks to the value of vitamin D as a potential therapeutic agent in multiple types of cancer. Recent RPCI research explored the mechanisms of vitamin D in the tumor microenvironment.