More evidence for vitamin D- including for PC

And even a statin drug in combination with vitamin D! Now I imagine some folks are going to chime in and say "there is not one iota of evidence that any vitamin helps with any thing", or something about like that. I will just say in advance "you are correct, except for all the evidence previously linked to and now this new additional evidence here".

Caution: I have not yet researched any of these individual studies to determine for myself if they are "good" or unbiased studies. I don't know if they were looking at what I would consider small or large doses of vitamin D, or whether other nutrients like vitamin K2 were included with any of these studies. However, I think the study count remains close to zero for finding any significant harm to supplementing with vit D, and of course it is pretty cheap. In fact, if sunshine is the way of getting it- 30 minutes a day at the pool or beach can produce a ton if sun screen is avoided- it is free.

"Daily vitamin D pill could cut the risk of dying from cancer by 13 per cent, new study reveals ..................
findings showing that people who were deficient in vitamin D were more than twice as likely to develop pancreatic cancer and also had a higher risk of bowel cancer..................

A separate study involving 79,000 healthy adults found taking a supplement for at least three years was associated with a 13 per cent drop in risk of dying from any form of cancer later in life.

A third study found taking a daily pill along with a statin was linked to a reduction in deaths from prostate cancer of almost 40 per cent.

All three studies were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago.............

The study that reported the 13 per cent reduction in cancer risk was conducted by Michigan State University and Hurley Medical Centre, which reviewed findings from ten trials involving adults with an average age of 68.............

A study at Madrid University Hospital in Spain, involving 2,280 men, found those on standard treatments for prostate cancer who also took vitamin D and a statin had 38 per cent lower mortality rates than those who did not.

Dr Tarek Haykal, lead researcher from Michigan State University, said: ‘I would like to see more oncologists and primary care doctors consider prescribing vitamin D for their patients as it carries many benefits with minimal side effects.’........................."

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7100891/daily-vitamin-d-pill-cut-risk-dying-cancer-13-cent-new-study-reveals.html

“Prescribing Fitbits to cancer patients, encouraging them to walk more, could significantly boost their survival, research suggests.
A number of studies presented at the Chicago conference found those with higher step counts had mortality rates up to a third lower than others.“

I started walking about a month ago - ADT and sitting on my butt at home and at work. I’ve been walking 5500 to 6500 steps (around two miles) according to my iPhone, four days per week - better than doing nothing, I figure. I suspected my iPhone wasn’t very accurate recording steps and distance so I did some Googling and ran into an interesting recent study on walking and older females. They found that those who walked at least 4400 steps per day had a 41% reduced mortality over four years and the benefit topped out at 7500 steps. The gold standard of 10,000 steps actually traces back to the marketing of a pedometer back in the ‘60s.

And no, as I suspected, the iPhone is not very accurate for recording steps/distance.

Caution on these studies: I just copied this here from a news source, but they give no reference links and I have not yet been able to find them elsewhere.

Pratoman said...
Billybob, I went to this website, https://www.ascopost.com/search-results/?q=vitamin+d+and+cancer hoping to find the studies you reference. Unfortunately, to my surprise, I found a mixed bag

Yes it does look like a mixed bag. Before I start reading them all, do you know if these are the new studies the article I posted was referring to? Some of these, based on the titles, seem very familiar for some reason, like I might have already posted about them before. If so, then at least one of these declared to show no benefit will indeed show some benefit, but might not quite rise to statistical significance(SS) for the main outcome, that sort of thing. And one of those was on terminal patients on there last days, where starting vitamin D al that late date bought them a few months, but maybe still not SS. But I'm going to have a look mainly to see if this includes these new studies.

EDIT: Yep, the very first one I see is one of the studies I have covered before. Headline is "no benefit", but considering the helpless of the circumstances, I thought the results were notable. And makes you wonder if thet had started 10 years earlier, rather than when they only had a year to live:
"In the high-dose group, median progression-free survival was 13 vs 11 months in the standard-dose group.

Patients in the high-dose vitamin D group were 36% less likely to have disease progression or death during the follow-up period of 22.9 months.

There were no significant differences between the high-dose and standard-dose group in terms of tumor overall "response rate or overall survival............

The study and its findings are “extremely important,” Dr. Ng said, because “it identifies a cost-effective, safe, and easily accessible agent as a potential new treatment for metastatic colorectal cancer. This could therefore potentially have a large and wide-reaching impact globally, regardless of a patient’s socioeconomic status or a country’s resources.”" And yet, the headline is "There were no significant differences between the high-dose and standard-dose group in terms of tumor overall response rate or overall survival.". Oh yeah, not comparing 0 zero vitamin D, but only to "less" vitamin D.

Post Edited (BillyBob@388) : 6/4/2019 4:23:50 PM (GMT-6)

This is funny to me. ( I can not find the new studies mentioned in the OP at this link).

But this is some one else looking at one of those "no benefit for vitamin D" studies:

"High-Dose Vitamin D Improves Outcomes in Metastatic Disease

HIGH-DOSE vitamin D was associated with prolonged progression-free survival in metastatic colorectal patients in the SUNSHINE trial, reported at the ASCO Annual Meeting by Kimmie Ng, MD, MPH, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston.2

Vitamin D has antineoplastic properties, and its receptor is expressed in colorectal cancer cells. Higher plasma 25(OH)D levels have been associated with improved survival in patients with colorectal cancer.

The SUNSHINE trial aimed to validate a subset analysis of the CALGB/SWOG 80405 study, which compared the efficacy of cetuximab vs bevacizumab (Avastin) when added to chemotherapy and found no difference in survival between the arms. However, in an analysis of 1,043 patients by baseline 25(OH)D level, patients in the highest quintile had improved overall survival (adjusted hazard ratio [HR] = 0.065; P = .001) and progression-free survival (adjusted HR = 0.079; P = .01). .............................

The effect of vitamin D was explored prospectively in the SUNSHINE trial of 139 previously untreated metastatic colorectal cancer patients, randomized to receive FOLFOX (leucovorin, fluorouracil [5-FU], oxaliplatin) and bevacizumab plus (1) vitamin D3 at 400 IU/d (the control arm) or (2) the high-dose arm receiving vitamin D3 at 8,000 IU/d for 2 weeks (loading dose) followed by vitamin D3 at 4,000 IU/d (maintenance dose). ..............................

““High-dose vitamin D resulted in improved progression-free survival,” Dr. Ng reported. Median progression-free survival was 13.1 months in the high-dose arm and 11.2 months in the control arm (HR = 0.69; P = .04). Use of high-dose vitamin D3 remained significant in the multivariate analysis (HR = 0.67; P = .02).

“This is the first completed, randomized, double-blinded, controlled clinical trial of vitamin D supplementation in colorectal cancer patients. In combination with first-line chemotherapy, high-dose vitamin D3 supplementation significantly improved progression-free survival in metastatic colorectal cancer patients and did not lead to any added toxicity,” Dr. Ng said. ..............

Blackjack said...
Continue to look for the growing mountain of observations study evidence...it grows almost every day, yet the understanding of how it works to fight a multitude of diseases continues, as of today, to be elusive. In the mean time, I'll continue to take Vit D daily...

So will I, until clear proof of either harm or worthlessness appears.

I am frustrated that I have not yet been able to find links to the actual studies that are the subject of this thread. I though maybe Ken(Prato) had found them, but most of those I had previously linked to in older threads. I think I may have used them as examples of how studies are often questionable at best, perhaps as the result of bias. For example, the headlines, or conclusion, of some of those studies was "no benefit". That is what you see a a quick glance. But when digging deeper, you usually(almost always) see that there were indeed benefits, but not enough to reach the vaunted statistical significance(SS). At least not for the main thing they were looking for. But often, they look at some sub group- say for example excluding those who got cancer in the first year thus probably already had cancer- and then the dif is indeed SS. But that is not the conclusion or headline, instead "no benefit" is.

I don't like not being able to read the actual studies that led to this thread, it makes me suspicious of whether these reports are legit or not. I must have found 50 reports telling about these studies, but no one gave a reference link so that we could look t the actual study. And I could not find them with a search of Pubmed or Google.