How Vitamin "D" relates to Cancer treatment?

Answer 1

Vitamin D 'slashes cancer risk'

Taking vitamin D tablets could substantially reduce the risk of pancreatic cancer, research suggests.
US scientists found taking the tablets cut the risk of a disease, which has a poor prognosis in almost half of cases.

There are more than 3,600 new cases of pancreatic cancer in women and more than 3,500 in men in the UK each year. Surgery is not often effective.

Vitamin D was examined as it previously showed promise in cutting the risk of prostate, breast and colon cancer.


Except for smoking, no environmental factors or dietary factors have been linked to the pancreatic cancer.

But previous studies have suggested that vitamin D might help to block the proliferation of cancer cells.

And pancreas tissue - both normal and cancerous - has been found to contain high levels of an enzyme that converts vitamin D into its active form.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5334534.stm

Answer 2

I have just been hearing recently, that scientists believe that Vitamin D can help various types of cancer, including: Breast, Colon, and skin cancer. I am sure they will probably be using it along with chemotherapy to help with a cure.

Answer 3

Site belows shows conclusively how it is why prostate cancer does not exist in ceratin areas. Also they found sunlight reduces chances of breast cancer which may be due to production of vit. D.

http://phifoundation.org/veg.html

Answer 4

I am not aware of any data tat suggests a benefit of Vit D for treatment of cancer.

Answer 5

From time to time news reports surface about a "cancer cluster" among workers in a building. Often the workers have been assigned to dark basement offices or sealed clean-rooms where they must wear space-suitlike garb. After an indoor environmental examination, investigators often are unable to correlate any factor in the building with the cancer cases. But what if, rather than a cancer-causing agent, the cancer cases are attributable to a missing protective factor? Given a growing body of evidence linking cancer with vitamin D deficiency, a question surfaces: Are indoor workers getting sufficient sunlight to make enough vitamin D to protect them from cancer?

Vitamin D is formed in the skin of animals and humans by the action of short-wave ultraviolet light, the so-called fast-tanning sun rays. Precursors of vitamin D in the skin are converted into cholecalciferol, a weak form of vitamin D3, which is then transported to the liver and kidneys where enzymes convert it to 1,25-dihydroxycholecalciferol, the more potent form of vitamin D3.

Fat-soluble vitamin D supplements are available in two forms. Vitamin D3 is believed to exhibit the most potent cancer- inhibiting properties and is the preferred form of the vitamin. More than 10 substances belong to a group of steroid compounds that exhibit vitamin D activity. Vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol), derived from plants and yeast, is a form of the vitamin commonly added to milk and some nutritional supplements. The first vitamin D to be discovered was a crude mixture called vitamin D1; it is not available as a supplement.

Although the list of vitamin-D-rich foods is limited, it is acquired from foods such as egg yolks, butter, cod liver oil and from cold-water fish such as salmon, herring and mackerel.

Cancer Prevention
Evidence of vitamin D's protective effect against cancer is compelling. For more than 50 years, documentation in the medical literature suggests regular sun exposure is associated with substantial decreases in death rates from certain cancers and a decrease in overall cancer death rates. Recent research suggests this is a causal relationship that acts through the body's vitamin D metabolic pathways. For instance, some evidence points to a prostate, breast and colon cancer belt in the United States, which lies in northern latitudes under more cloud cover than other regions during the year. Rates for these cancers are two to three times higher than in sunnier areas.1

Dark-skinned people require more sun exposure to make vitamin D. The thickness of the skin layer called the stratum corneum affects the absorption of UV radiation. Black human skin is thicker than white skin and thus transmits only about 40 percent of the UV rays for vitamin D production. Darkly pigmented individuals who live in sunny equatorial climates experience a higher mortality rate (not incidence) from breast and prostate cancer when they move to geographic areas that are deprived of sunlight exposure in winter months. The rate of increase varies, and researchers hesitate to quote figures because many migrant black populations also have poor nutrition and deficient health care that confound statistics somewhat.2

Although excessive sun exposure may give rise to skin cancer, researchers as early as 1936 were aware that skin cancer patients have reduced rates of other cancers. One researcher estimates moderate sunning would prevent 30,000 annual cancer deaths in the United States.3

Vitamin D may also go beyond cancer prevention and provide tumor therapy. Much ado has been made of pharmaceutical angiogenesis inhibitors—agents that help inhibit the growth of new, undesirable blood vessels that tumors require for nutrient supply and growth. Laboratory tests have shown vitamin D to be a potent angiogenesis inhibitor.4

Vitamin D also works at another stage of cancer development. Tumor cells are young, immortal cells that never grow up, mature and die off. Because vitamin D derivatives have been shown to promote normal cell growth and maturation, drug companies today are attempting to engineer patentable forms of vitamin D for anti-cancer therapy.5