Calcium and Vitamin D supplements fail to avert breast cancer

Los Angeles, November 12: Discounting the long held belief, a new research suggests that a daily dose of Calcium and Vitamin D supplements does not help prevent breast malignancies in postmenopausal women.

While previous studies had talked of reduced risk of heart attacks, strokes and breast cancers in the mineral-vitamin-therapy, the results of the current study fail to look beyond its therapeutic effect of maintaining healthy bones.

For the study the researchers zeroed in on over 36,000 postmenopausal women, average age 65 years. None had a history of breast cancerdefine.

For 7 years, the participants were randomly put on either a one daily dose of 1,000 milligrams of calcium and 400 IU (international units) of vitamin D, or a placebo drug combination.

Follow-up analysis diagnosed 528 cases of invasive breast cancer in the group taking active supplements, as compared to 546 cases in the placebo drug group.

To further assess the likelihood of Vitamin D playing a role in averting breast cancers, the researchers compared 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels, a vital indicator of Vitamin D in the body, in 1074 women who developed cancer with a randomly picked up 1074 women without cancer.

The researchers found no significant association between 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels and reduced breast cancer risk. An optimal health hinges on a wide range of lifestyle choices and eating well is one of them.

Despite the findings, researchers recommend eating a healthy diet rich in minerals and vitamins.

"The message is that there's benefit from calcium and vitamin D for fracture risk, but taking those supplements won't be doing much for breast cancer risk. You wouldn't expect that you're doing it to improve breast cancer outcome," study’s lead author, Dr. Rowan Chlebowski, a Medical Oncologistdefine at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, noted.

The results of the study released online on Tuesday will feature in the November 19 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer.