It seems like vitamin D is all we hear about lately.  A flurry of well designed studies have been brought to light in the past decade.   The largest study to date on vitamin D and cancer prevention confirmed several smaller studies which have suggested that higher blood levels of vitamin D are associated with lower risk for colorectal cancer.  


Spanning 10 European countries and 520,000 subjects, vitamin D levels were measured and subjects were followed for 4 years after enrollment.   1248 of the subjects were then diagnosed with colorectal cancer.  It was found that those with lower vitamin D 25 hydroxy concentrations (25-50 nmol/L) were associated with higher colorectal cancer risk and those with higher concentrations (75-100 nmol/L) had lower risk.  Patients in the highest quintile had a 40% lower risk for CRC than those in the lowest quintile.  

At this point I strongly believe that patients should be advised to take vitamin D in order to help prevent colorectal cancer.   Such advice should be routine and definitely not considered "alternative."    

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