Study Suggests Link between Low Vitamin D, Cancer

SAN DIEGO—Researchers at the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego proposed a new model of cancer development—DINOMIT—that suggests genetic mutations could account for the earliest stages of many cancers, reported EurekAlert.

Cedric Garland, MD, Ph.D., professor of family and preventive medicine at the UC San Diego School of Medicine said preliminary research suggests that much of the evolutionary process in cancer could be arrested at the outset by maintaining vitamin D adequacy.

"Vitamin D may halt the first stage of the cancer process by re-establishing intercellular junctions in malignancies having an intact vitamin D receptor," he said.

The findings, published online May 22 in the Annals of Epidemiology, said previous theories linking vitamin D to certain cancers have been tested and confirmed in more than 200 epidemiological studies, and understanding of its physiological basis stems from more than 2,500 laboratory studies.