How important is vitamin D status to the prevention of breast and other cancers?
Join GrassrootsHealth on Wednesday, October 21st for a special Vitamin D Study Hour with Joan Lappe, PhD, RN, FAAN, to explore the evidence on vitamin D in cancer prevention. Dr. Lappe will revisit her landmark 2007 and 2017 randomized controlled trials in postmenopausal women and discuss what she learned about vitamin D status and cancer risk, followed by a paper she co-authored with GrassrootsHealth in 2018 specifically looking at breast cancer. Her 2007 trial found that women receiving vitamin D and calcium had a significantly lower risk of developing cancer, with an even greater reduction of 76% when cancers diagnosed during the first year were excluded (to exclude any cancers that may have been pre-existing at study enrollment). Her larger 2017 trial found that while the primary treatment-group comparison did not reach statistical significance (p=.06), higher achieved vitamin D blood levels were significantly associated with lower cancer incidence. A publication in 2018 combined her study data with data from the GrassrootsHealth cohort to specifically look at the effect of vitamin D serum level on breast cancer incidence, revealing an 82% decreased risk among women with a level of 60 ng/ml or higher compared to a level below 20 ng/ml.
Dr. Lappe will put these findings into the context of breast cancer prevention and discuss what decades of research have taught us about vitamin D, cancer risk, and the importance of vitamin D status.
REGISTRATION CLOSED (Recording will be posted soon!)
Your homework assignment for this study hour is:
- Read Vitamin D and calcium supplementation reduces cancer risk: results of a randomized trial (Lappe et al, 2007)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002916523281162?via%3Dihub - Read Effect of Vitamin D and Calcium Supplementation on Cancer Incidence in Older Women
A Randomized Clinical Trial *w/ Supplemental Content (Lappe et al, 2017)
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2613159 - Read Breast cancer risk markedly lower with serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations ≥ 60 vs < 20 ng/ml (150 vs 50 nmol/L): Pooled analysis of two randomized trials and a prospective cohort (McDonnell et al, 2018)
https://www.grassrootshealth.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/McDonnell-2018-breast-cancer-GRH.pdf
Submit your questions ahead of time for this or any one of our upcoming Vitamin D Study Hour webinars here: https://www.grassrootshealth.
About Joan M. Lappe, PhD, RN, FAAN
Dr. Joan M. Lappe is an internationally recognized researcher and educator whose work has advanced understanding of the roles of vitamin D and calcium in disease prevention, particularly osteoporosis and cancer. She is Professor Emeritus at Creighton University, where she held the Criss/Beirne Endowed Chair in Nursing and served as Professor of Medicine in the Osteoporosis Research Center. Her distinguished career has been recognized with numerous honors, including election to the International Nurse Research Hall of Fame, the prestigious Ada Sue Hinshaw Award from the Friends of the National Institute of Nursing Research, and fellowship in the American Academy of Nursing.
Dr. Lappe joined renowned calcium and vitamin D researcher Dr. Robert P. Heaney’s team at Creighton in 1988 and worked with him for nearly 30 years, first as his mentee and later as a colleague. Her early research focused on osteoporosis prevention, but Dr. Heaney’s interest in emerging research linking sunlight and vitamin D with cancer inspired her to examine cancer outcomes in her own calcium and vitamin D research. This helped launch a research trajectory that would make Dr. Lappe a leading investigator in vitamin D, calcium, bone health, and cancer prevention. She was also part of the early collaboration between Dr. Heaney, Carole Baggerly, GrassrootsHealth, and vitamin D scientists around the world; an effort focused on advancing vitamin D research and translating the science into public health action.
Read more about Dr. Lappe here.
