News Item

01/12/09 | Vitamin D levels at skin cancer diagnosis may be linked to risk of relapse.

The UK's Telegraph (9/22, Devlin) reported that patients with colon cancer "who had higher levels of vitamin D...when diagnosed with colon cancer were 50 percent more likely to survive than those with low levels," according to a study appearing in the British Journal of Cancer. For the study, researchers "followed 1,017 patients with colon cancer...for around nine years," finding that "levels of vitamin D after colorectal cancer diagnosis may be important for survival." Meanwhile, a second study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, showed that "patients who had high levels of the vitamin when they were diagnosed with skin cancer were more likely to have thinner tumors." Meanwhile, "skin cancer patients who had the lowest levels of vitamin D in their blood when they were diagnosed were almost a third more likely to relapse than those with high levels," researchers found.