Researchers Say More Aggressive Vitamin D Supplementation Needed in Obese Cance...( CHICAGO June 15 -- Body mass index (...),Health

CHICAGO, June 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Body mass index (BMI) should be taken into account when assessing a cancer patient's vitamin D status, according to researchers at Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), who found that obese cancer patients had significantly lower levels of vitamin D compared to non-obese patients.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090612/CTCALOGO)

The association between vitamin D and obesity remains unsettled with studies reporting conflicting findings on the relationship between the two. This association assumes even greater importance in cancer because of the alleged role of vitamin D in cancer.

"Currently, the dietary recommendations for vitamin D do not take into account a patient's BMI," said Carolyn Lammersfeld, national director of nutrition for CTCA and a principal investigator in the study. "We investigated the relationship between vitamin D and BMI in a large sample of cancer patients and found that as BMI groups increased from normal to overweight or obese classifications, there was a significant decrease in vitamin D."

The researchers evaluated a group of 740 cancer patients seen at CTCA from January 2008 to June 2008. Of the 740 patients, 303 were male and 437 female, with a mean age at presentation of 55.7 years (SD = 10.2). The mean BMI was 27.9 kg/m2 (SD = 6.7). The most common cancers were lung (134, 18.1%), breast (131, 17.7%), colorectal (97, 13.1%), pancreatic
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