Vitamin D and Cancer Prevention: Hold the Applause
To test the hypothesis that vitamin D plays a role in protecting people from cancer wouldn't it be sensible to monitor the serum levels of the vitamin in thousands of subjects and see if it's related to their risk of cancer? It's been done and the results are in.
"Serum Vitamin D and Cancer Mortality in the NHANES III Study (1988-2006)", the work of the NCI's Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, reports that whatever the levels, whatever the latitude and whatever the race among 16,819 participants across the Americas there was no evidence that vitamin D prevented cancer.
Of course, epidemiology being epidemiology, if you want good news on vitamin D and cancer all you have to do is open the next journal and find "Vitamin D in Health and Disease" and you can feel better about taking your vitamins as it reports, upon reviewing the literature, a protective effect not only from breast and GI cancers but heart disease, diabetes and more.
And so it goes.
