Vitamin D lowers cancer risk in older women: study

Building hope that one pill can prevent many cancers, vitamin D cut the risk of several types of cancer by 60 per cent overall for older women in the most rigorous study yet.

The new research strengthens the case made by some specialists that vitamin D may be a powerful cancer preventive and most people should get more of it. Experts remain split, though, on how much to take.

'No other method to prevent cancer has been identified that has such a powerful impact.' researcher Cedric Garland

"The findings are a breakthrough of great medical and public health importance," said Cedric Garland, a prominent vitamin D researcher at the University of California-San Diego.

"No other method to prevent cancer has been identified that has such a powerful impact."

While the most reliable yet, the study does have drawbacks. It was designed mainlyto monitor how calcium and vitamin D improve bone health, and the number of cancer cases overall was small, showing up in just 50 patients.

"It's a very small study," said Dr. Edward Giovannucci, who researches nutrition and cancer at the Harvard School of Public Health. "I don't think it's the last word."

Important step

In any case, the study takes an important step in extending several decades of research that began with observations that cancer rates among similar groups of people were lower in southern latitudes than in northern ones.

Scientists reasoned that had to do with more direct sunlight in southern regions. The skin makes vitamin D when exposed to sunlight's ultraviolet rays.

This study used that same form of the vitamin, known as D3 or cholecalciferol. Multivitamins usually carry a much weaker variant known as D2, but D3 is available in stand-alone dietary supplements.

Earlier research has shown that vitamin D helps regulate cell growth, a fundamental biological process that goes haywire in cancer. Most other supplements have tended to target specific types of disease in early testing, such as selenium or vitamin E for prostate cancer.

This study, published Friday in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, is the first time that researchers significantly boosted and measured blood levels of vitamin D and then followed identical groups of patients from start to finish.

Higher dose vitamin D

That's why, despite its modest size, the research was generating excitement. Nearly all other work has compared disparate groups of patients.

The researchers at Creighton University in Omaha focused on 1,179 seemingly healthy women with an average age of 67. The women were divided into three groups: 446 got calcium and vitamin D3 supplements, a similar number got calcium alone, and 288 took dummy pills.

The research team gave 1,000 daily international units of vitamin D, more than current guidelines calling for 200 to 600 units depending on a person's age.

The researchers intended to check mainly for the effects of calcium on bone health. Their interest in cancer risk was secondary.

But the lower cancer risk stood out. Only 13 women, orthree per cent, developed cancer over four years of calcium and vitamin D supplements. With calcium alone, 17 women, or four per cent, got cancer. With dummy pills, cancer appeared in 20 women, orseven per cent.

That shows a 60 per cent lower cancer risk over four years in the group taking both supplements, compared with patients takingthe placebo. And when the first-year cancers were excluded the ones mostly likely present before the study began the findings were stronger still: a 77 per cent lower risk for the combo group.

While the calcium-only group lowered its four-year cancer risk by 47 per cent compared with the untreated group, it did no better when early cancers were excluded. That suggests calcium alone may have done little in this experiment, the researchers said.

Experts reviewing the study focused on vitamin D as the powerful agent in the combo group, but it can't be ruled out that calcium might somehow amplify the effect of vitamin D.

While numbers were limited, these women developed a broad range of cancers, including disease of the breast, colon, lungs and blood.

Dr. Michael Holick, of Boston University Medical Center, who sat on the professional panel that issued the 1997 guidelines for vitamin D, said this study shows that enough vitamin D "markedly reduces the risk of developing the mostserious deadly cancers."