A new study has discovered that Vitamin D does little to cut the risk of cancer in humans. The vitamin, linked to sunshine, was widely credited with warding off cancer, strengthening bones and cutting the risk of heart disease and diabetes.
The study, published online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, found there is no relationship between vitamin D levels and the overall risk of dying from cancer.
The team of researchers, led by D. Michal Freedman of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, analysed data from a health and nutrition examination survey to examine the relationship between levels of circulating vitamin D in the blood and cancer mortality in a group of 16,818 participants aged 17 and older.
After about a decade of follow-up, 536 participants had died of cancer. Cancer mortality was not related to the level of circulating vitamin D for the overall group, nor was it related when the researchers looked at the data by sex, race, or age.
"To our knowledge, this study is the first to examine the relationship between measured serum vitamin D levels and cancer mortality for selected site and for all sites combined," the authors of the research have written. However, higher levels of vitamin D were associated with a 72 per cent reduced risk of colorectal cancer mortality.
"These findings must be put into the context of total diet and lifestyle." "There are many risk factors other than diet for colorectal cancer, and there are many possible dietary risk factors other than vitamin D that have been linked to cancer risk," Cindy Davis and Johanna Dwyer said in the same journal