Interesting Vit D and Calcium trial result for post-meno cancer

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I read a blurb about this study in The Week but hadn’t been able to find it anywhere until now. This is not a breast cancer article per se, but I know that there is alot of interest in cancer prevention.

1: Am J Clin Nutr. 2007 Jun;85(6):1586-91.

Vitamin D and calcium supplementation reduces cancer risk: results of a
randomized trial.

Lappe JM, Travers-Gustafson D, Davies KM, Recker RR, Heaney RP.

Osteoporosis Research Center, Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68131, USA.
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BACKGROUND: Numerous observational studies have found supplemental calcium and vitamin D to be associated with reduced risk of common cancers. However, interventional studies to test this effect are lacking. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this analysis was to determine the efficacy of calcium alone and calcium plus vitamin D in reducing incident cancer risk of all types. DESIGN: This was a 4-y, population-based, double-blind, randomized placebo-controlled trial. The primary outcome was fracture incidence, and the principal secondary outcome was cancer incidence. The subjects were 1179 community-dwelling women randomly selected from the population of healthy postmenopausal women aged &gt;55 y in a 9-county rural area of Nebraska centered at latitude 41.4 degrees N. Subjects were randomly assigned to receive 1400-1500 mg supplemental calcium/d alone (Ca-only), supplemental calcium plus 1100 IU vitamin D3/d (Ca + D), or placebo. RESULTS: When analyzed by intention to treat, cancer incidence was lower in the Ca + D women than in the placebo control subjects (P &lt; 0.03). With the use of logistic regression, the unadjusted relative risks (RR) of incident cancer in the Ca + D
and Ca-only groups were 0.402 (P = 0.01) and 0.532 (P = 0.06), respectively. When analysis was confined to cancers diagnosed after the first 12 mo, RR for the Ca + D group fell to 0.232 (CI: 0.09, 0.60; P &lt; 0.005) but did not change significantly for the Ca-only group. In multiple logistic regression models, both treatment and serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations were significant, independent predictors of cancer risk. CONCLUSIONS: Improving calcium and vitamin D nutritional status substantially reduces all-cancer risk in postmenopausal women. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT00352170.

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I saw something in today’s paper that showed that taking vitamin D supplements decreased the risk of getting cancer by 7%. A large number of people had been followed, can’t remember any more details, other than it was not specific to any particular cancer.

RR

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Wish i’d been part of that trial!!!

Alisonxxx

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Hi Alison and RR,

I missed that other vitamin D one.

To translate the abstract into plan English, in this study the vitamin D + calcium group had only 40% the amount of cancer of the group that didn’t receive anything and there is less than a 3% chance that this is pure chance. When they only looked at cancers that occurred one year after the trial started, the treatment group had only 23% or a quarter the cases of cancer and the odds of this just being luck are less than 1 in 200. I wonder if the effect was so strong because Nebraska is a very cold place in the winter so these women wouldn’t get much vitamin D for much of the year. It would be interesting to have a trial like this in Britain since vitamin D deficiency is widespread. I read that 90% of the children in my district are vitamin D deficient and, when my sister lived up in Glasgow, she was diagnosed with vitamin D deficiency by a GP who said that it was widespread and she is very fair skinned, which should have helped.