‘Ride the Tiger’ — a Documentary About the Bipolar Brain Do Men Sweat More Than Women? Life Expectancy Projected to Soar — Except in the US How CDC Uses False Fears to Promote Vaccine Uptake Vitamin C May Be a Potent Adjunct to Cancer Treatment Doctors have known that low levels of vitamin D are linked to certain kinds of cancers as well as to diabetes and asthma, but new research also shows that the vitamin can kill human cancer cells. Researchers took human breast cancer cells and treated them with a potent form of vitamin D. Within a few days, half the cancer cells shriveled up and died. The vitamin's effects were even more dramatic on breast cancer cells injected into mice. After several weeks of treatment, the cancer tumors in the mice shrank by an average of more than 50 percent. Similar results have been achieved on colon and prostate cancer tumors in mice. Vitamin D Helps Prevent Heart Disease, Diabetes Further, middle aged and elderly people with high levels of vitamin D could reduce their chances of developing heart disease or diabetes by 43 percent, according to researchers.
A systematic literature review of the relationship between vitamin D and cardiometabolic disorders looked at 28 studies including nearly 100,000 participants. The studies revealed a significant association between high levels of vitamin D and a decreased risk of developing cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome. All studies included were published between 1990 and 2009, with the majority published between 2004 and 2009. Half of the studies were conducted in the United States, eight were European, two studies were from Iran, three from Australasia and one from India.Pancreatic cancer is arguably the worst cancer diagnosis anyone can receive. It has the highest death rate of any type of cancer at 94 percent. Neither radiation nor chemotherapy is effective against pancreatic tumors.That makes the discovery of a promising new treatment that’s nearly as simple as a home remedy, described today in the journal Cell, all the more amazing. The treatment is a souped-up version of vitamin D, delivered by injection.
Learn More About Pancreatic Cancer and How It's Diagnosed » The science of pancreatic cancer lags behind that of other types of cancer, partly because the disease has only become common in recent years. Looking at how the cancer works at the molecular level, researchers at the Salk Institute near San Diego, California, found that, in an effort to contain the cancer, the pancreas walls it off with dense, inflamed tissue. Read More: 7 Surprising Benefits of Vitamin D » “The pancreas is building a safe around the tumor. It’s reasonably successful for doing that for a while, but drugs cannot get to the tumor because it’s being protected by this living safe,” said Ronald Evans, director of the Gene Expression Laboratory at the Salk Institute and the paper’s senior author. Evans and his colleagues wanted to figure out how to break into the safe. They discovered that the cells that make up the living safe, called stellate cells, had high levels of a particular vitamin D receptor.
Introducing the vitamin could return them to their normal, more pliant state. But regular vitamin D supplements weren’t up to the task: It took a powerful synthetic derivative to crack the safe. Mice with pancreatic tumors that were treated with the modified vitamin D along with anti-cancer drugs lived 50 percent longer than those that got just the drugs.“It’s one of the reasons that this approach has come a little bit out of left field, because people had tried vitamin D, but they tried regular vitamin D and that simply does not have the power or the impact to get you where you want to go fast enough,” Evans said.Pancreatic cancer patients often experience vitamin D deficiencies. It’s not clear why, but it appears that the cancer has learned to use the body’s safe-building response against it. A healthy supply of vitamin D may help keep stellate cells in their normal state, which is less beneficial for the cancer.It may also be that vitamin D deficiency is an early symptom of cancer.
Evans and his colleagues found that pancreatic tumors appeared to “grind down” vitamin D because they recognize it as a threat.But cancer can’t keep up with the new synthetic version of vitamin D for long, giving doctors an opportunity to attack the tumor with drugs or radiation. The results of the study were so promising that the modified vitamin D is already being given to human patients. University of Pennsylvania researchers began giving the vitamin D to pancreatic cancer patients in February. Because the trial is double blind, there’s no way to know if the approach is working. Evans credited the group Stand Up to Cancer, which has partnered with his team on the research, for the speed of the transition from the lab to the clinic.Until recently, scientists thought stellate cells were unique to the liver. Evans and his colleagues also began by researching the liver. But then they found stellate cells in the pancreas and expanded their work. Now, they’re exploring whether stellate cells might be in play when the liver, kidney, or even lungs respond to cancerous tumors.
Learn Why Only 5 Percent of American Adults with Cancer Take Part in Clinical Trials » These cancers also surround themselves with a living tissue “safe.”“We believe [stellate cells] are more widely found in other organs. If that’s true, then this kind of therapy can expand,” Evans said. HTTP Error 404.0 - Not Found The resource you are looking for has been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. The directory or file specified does not exist on the Web server. The URL contains a typographical error. A custom filter or module, such as URLScan, restricts access to the file. Things you can try: Create the content on the Web server. Review the browser URL. Create a tracing rule to track failed requests for this HTTP status code and see which module is calling SetStatus. For more information about creating a tracing rule for failed requests, click here. Links and More Information This error means that the file or directory does not exist on the server.