Women with a vitamin D deficiency when they are diagnosed with breast cancer have an increased risk of dying within 10 years, research has found. Patients whose levels of the vitamin are below average are twice as likely to see the cancer spread, and 73 per cent more likely to die within a decade of diagnosis, according to a study due to be presented next month by the American Society of Clinical Oncology. While the correlation between low levels of vitamin D and the increased risk of breast, prostate, pancreas, oesophagus and colon cancer is well documented, no previous attempt has been made until now to link it to patients’ prognosis after the disease is discovered. ‘This is the first study to look at the impact of vitamin D on outcomes of breast cancer,’ said the lead author, Dr Pamela Goodwin, an oncologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and professor of medicine at the University of Toronto. The researchers studied 512 women diagnosed with localised breast cancer between 1989 and 1995 and followed their progress for 10 years. At the time of diagnosis, 37.5 per cent had low levels of the vitamin, 38.5 per […]