Vitamin D may cut breast cancer risk

Washington: Vitamin D — well known for its benefits in building healthy bones — may reduce the risk of breast cancer and also boost a patient’s chance of survival, study has found.

Breast cancer remains the most common cancer in women worldwide and is the leading cause of death from cancer in women.

Reproductive risk factors such as early onset of puberty, late menopause, later age at first pregnancy, never having been pregnant, obesity, and a family history have all been shown to be associated with breast cancer development.

The role of vitamin D concentration in the development of breast cancer, however, continues to be debated. The study involving more than 600 Brazilian women, published in the journal Menopause, suggests that vitamin D may reduce cancer risk by inhibiting cell proliferation.

Researchers said that postmenopausal women had an increased risk of vitamin D deficiency at the time of their breast cancer diagnoses, associated with higher rates of obesity, than women of the same age group without cancer.

“This study suggests that higher levels of vitamin D in the body are associated with lowered breast cancer risk,” said JoAnn Pinkerton, Executive Director at The North American Menopause Society (NAMS) in the US. Similar studies also have previously demonstrated a relationship between vitamin D and breast cancer mortality.

Women in the highest quartile of vitamin D concentrations, in fact, had a 50 per cent lower death rate from breast cancer than those in the lower quartile, suggesting that vitamin D levels should be restored to a normal range in all women with breast cancer.