Vitamin D may cut prostate cancer risk, suggests sunlight study

High sun exposure halved the risk of prostate cancer in men participating in a US trial, said researchers today, likely because of their body’s higher vitamin D stores.

If future studies continue to show that sunlight lowers prostate cancer risk, men may be advised to increase their vitamin D intake from diet and supplements as a safer option to sunbathing, they say.

Writing in today’s issue of Cancer Research, researchers noted that in men with certain gene variants, high sun exposure reduced prostate cancer risk by as much as 65 per cent.

Previous research has shown that the prostate uses vitamin D to promote the normal growth of prostate cells and to inhibit the invasiveness and spread of prostate cancer cells to other parts of the body.

"The genes involved are those that determine the type of vitamin D receptors a person has," said co-author Gary Schwartz of Wake Forest University. "These receptors, which function with vitamin D like a lock and key, vary in their ability to bind vitamin D and thus to influence cell behaviour."

The trial compared 450 non-Hispanic white patients in the San Francisco Bay area who had advanced prostate cancer with a matched control group of 455 men who did not have prostate cancer.

Courtesy of nutraingredients.com