Vitamin D

Vitamin D is currently a very hot topic in cancer treatment and prevention and is intuitively appealing to patients as well — who could object to a vitamin? Some disappointing news on the prevention side was released by the National Institutes of Health last week and will be published in a series of multiple articles in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

I was not able to obtain the full text of the articles yet, but there is a press release, which offers some news — there was no difference in development of endometrial, esophageal, gastric, kidney, ovarian, or pancreatic cancers among people with high, normal or low levels of vitamin D. The cohort study included geographically diverse populations as part of the National Cancer Institute's Cohort Consortium, and although included a range of follow-up, for some participants included an impressive 33-year follow-up.

Somewhat concerning was that they did find that those with the highest levels of vitamin D had higher rates of pancreatic cancer — a finding that clearly warranted further explanation. Although the results were overall disappointing, I continue to think that the answer to preventing something as complex and (usually) slowly developing as cancer is not gong to be as simple as a single supplement or test for the majority of patients or the majority of cancers.