Study: Vitamin D May Play A Role In Prostate Cancer Disparities

  Vitamin D deficiency could be the reason African American men experience more aggressive prostate cancer at a younger age compared with European American men, new research from Cedars-Sinai Cancer suggests.

While previous research has investigated vitamin D in the context of health disparities, this is the first study to look at its functions in a genome-wide manner in African American versus European American men.

"African American men are more likely than European American men to develop prostate cancer, and are twice as likely to die from the disease," said Moray Campbell, Ph.D., research scientist at Cedars-Sinai Cancer and senior author of the study.

"African men retain higher melanin levels in the skin to protect against the strong sun-which also helps the body produce vitamin D. Because of this, their descendants in the U.S., which receives fewer hours per year of bright sunshine than African countries do, are often vitamin D deficient."

When investigators examined prostate cancer cells from patients of African and European descent, developed in the lab of Clayton Yates, Ph.D., at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, they noted differences between how these groups of cells reacted to exposure to vitamin D. "Their response to vitamin D was very, very different, including which genes the vitamin D receptor was controlling and the magnitude of that control," Campbell said.

Further work, he said, is needed to determine the level of vitamin D that would be most beneficial for each group, and to examine how the vitamin D receptor works with other proteins associated with prostate cancer.

The team also plans to examine vitamin D and its relationship to health disparities in other hormone-dependent cancers, such as breast cancer.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-04-vitamin-d-play-role-prostate.html