Vitamin D is understood for its various protective functions, from supporting bone health to boosting immunity, the “sunshine vitamin” is crucial for overall health and wellbeing.

But what’s its role in cancer mortality? A latest study has found that taking vitamin D recurrently reduces the danger of dying from cancer.

Vitamin D deficiency is prevalent worldwide. Studies have shown that 42% of U.S. adults are deficient, while 50% of kids below five years and 70% of kids between the ages of six and 11 have low vitamin D levels.

The deficiency of vitamin D is more common amongst cancer patients during treatment than in the overall population.

To grasp how vitamin D is related to cancer mortality risk, the researchers from German Cancer Research Center evaluated 14 high-quality studies with a complete of virtually 105,000 participants. Researchers found that taking vitamin D day by day could reduce cancer mortality within the population by 12%.

“Based on current studies, vitamin D3 supplementation probably doesn’t protect against developing cancer, however it could reduce the likelihood of dying from cancer. Nonetheless, previous studies on cancer mortality have yielded very different results, and we were concerned with the explanations for this,” Ben Schöttker, an epidemiologist on the German Cancer Research Center, a co-author of the study said.

The research team observed only a 6% reduction in cancer mortality with vitamin D3 supplementation, which was not statistically significant. Nonetheless, when the vitamin D intake was regular, the study yielded a statistically significant 12% reduction in cancer mortality.

Schöttker said taking day by day doses of vitamin D3 makes a major difference since it produces an energetic agent, the hormone 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D, which presumably inhibits tumor growth.

“We observed this twelve percent reduction in cancer mortality after untargeted vitamin D3 administration to individuals with and without vitamin D deficiency. We will subsequently assume that the effect is significantly higher for those people who find themselves actually vitamin D deficient,” Schöttker added.

The study further revealed people aged 70 and older benefited most from vitamin D3 therapy when it was taken day by day. The effect was most evident when the patients began taking the complement even before cancer diagnosis.

“This work underlines the good potential of vitamin D3 administration within the prevention of cancer deaths. Regular intake at low doses is related to almost negligible risk and really low price,” Hermann Brenner, one other co-author of the study, said.

Researchers found that taking vitamin D day by day could reduce cancer mortality by 12%.
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Published by Medicaldaily.com