Vitamin D Useful in a Variety of Cases
Researchers have found that Vitamin D is beneficial for patients with prostate cancer as it reduces Ki-67, a cancer proliferation marker, significantly. They have found that the decline in Ki-67 correlates with the increasing serum and prostate levels of calcitriol that increases with vitamin D administration. Moreover, favorable changes in expression of micro-RNA (miRNA) occur with the high-dose of vitamin D that results in tumor suppression.
“This was early-phase clinical research, essential to justify larger studies that would aim to prove that vitamin D prolongs survival or prevents cancer,” Reinhold Vieth, PhD, a clinical biochemist at the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, said during a press conference at the 2012 AACR Annual Meeting.
“We still need to sort out the role of calcium,” he added. “Currently, we predict that high calcium may be adverse to the prostate only if the vitamin D level is low.”
In another study, it has been found that more than 800 international units (IU) of vitamin D per day are helpful in reducing the chances of hip fractures in older women by 30 percent. "Vitamin D supplementation is effective in fracture reduction, including hip fractures," said study author Dr. Heike Bischoff-Ferrari, from the Center on Aging and Mobility at the University of Zurich and Wald City Hospital, also in Zurich.
"However, dose matters, as we saw this benefit only at the highest intake level of greater than 800 IU per day, and no dose below 792 IU per day reduced fracture risk," she said. This research has been published online in the July 5 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.
In other research, it has been found that high levels of Vitamin D could protect hospital patients from hospital acquired infections, the leading cause of death in the U.S. healthcare field. Vitamin D has an important antimicrobial role, giving it the ability to fortify immune response in the fight against antibiotic resistance.
Researchers noted that after studying Vitamin D testing patterns in six Veterans Medical Centers in the southeastern United States, that “vitamin D deficiency and lack of monitoring predicted increased inpatient health care costs.”
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