Study shows higher levels of vitamin D corresponds to lower cancer risk

If you want to lower your risk of cancer, you may want to safely soak up the sun or start taking a supplement you probably already have in your cupboard.

According to researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine higher levels of vitamin D, specifically serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D, are associated with a correspondingly reduced risk of cancer.

They published their findings on April 6.

"We have quantitated the ability of adequate amounts of vitamin D to prevent all types of invasive cancer combined,” said Dr. Cedric Garland, with the UC San Diego School of Medicine Department of Family Medicine and Public Health, in a statement.

Garland and his late brother, Frank, were the first to connect vitamin D deficiency and some cancers in 1980. That’s when they noted populations at higher latitudes were more likely to get colon cancer because they have less available sunlight and are therefore more deficient in vitamin D, which is produced by the body through sun exposure.

They later determined vitamin D links to other cancers, such as breast, lung and bladder.

The new study sought to determine what blood level of vitamin D was required to effectively reduce cancer risk.

The researchers analyzed two groups of over 1,000 women.

Women with 40 ng/ml or greater of the specific type of vitamin D had a 67 per cent lower risk of cancer than women with levels of 20 ng/ml or less.

In the past, other scientists have argued whether a target of 20 ng/ml or 50 ng/ml of vitamin D should be the target.

Garland does not identify an optimum daily intake of vitamin D or whether it’s best to get it from sun exposure, diet or supplements.

He said that reduced cancer risk becomes measurable at 40 ng/ml, and a broad effort to increase concentrations of that type of vitamin D to a minimum of that amount would substantially reduce cancer rates and deaths.

Researchers wrote that vitamin D could be used more often as a prevention tool, and that prevention of cancer, rather than early detection and better treatment, would help lower cancer’s hold the most.