THE MOSS REPORTS

"There's nothing new under the sun," goes the old saying.

Well, perhaps there is. This week and next I discuss some new research that suggests that exposure to sunlight can be instrumental in improving the outcome of cancer surgery.

Vitamin D is produced in the skin in response to sunlight, and there is mounting evidence that our vitamin D status significantly influences not only our risk of developing various common kinds of cancer but also our ability to fight cancer recurrence following surgery aimed at treating existing disease.

If we listen to popular wisdom we could be forgiven for thinking that exposure to the sun's rays is entirely undesirable. For years we have been told to cover up, slather on the sunscreen and keep sun exposure to a minimum. Yet now it is becoming increasingly apparent that stringent sun avoidance may actually be harmful in its own right.

It is extremely hard, in the face of such mixed messages, for the layman to make prudent health choices. And when the choices involve the prevention and treatment of cancer, the stakes are even higher. The conflicting claims of different factions within the scientific community can render decision making infinitely more difficult even for the most well informed person.

Keeping abreast of the latest research and maintaining rigorous objectivity in weighing the worth of cancer treatments has been the guiding principle of my work in the cancer field over the past thirty years. It is my mission to provide cancer patients and their families with the most thorough analysis of current thinking on the complexities of cancer and its treatment so that they can face the disease with confidence.

The Moss Reports are a series of comprehensive guides to the best available conventional and alternative treatments for almost 200 different kinds of cancer.

If you would like to order a Moss Report for yourself or someone you love, you can do so from our website, www.cancerdecisions.com, or by calling Diane at 1-800-980-1234 (814-238-3367 from outside the US).

We look forward to helping you.

NEW EVIDENCE THAT VITAMIN D FIGHTS CANCER, PART ONE

In a world of increasingly sophisticated and expensive medical treatments, it is refreshing to find a way to improve the outcome of cancer that is both effective and inexpensive. At the 96th annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in San Francisco in April, researchers from Harvard University showed that a successful outcome for surgery to treat early-stage lung cancer is linked to the patient's vitamin D intake.

The patients' vitamin levels were calculated by assessing dietary sources, any supplements the patients took, as well as the amount of sunlight to which they were exposed. (Vitamin D is formed in the skin through the action of sunlight.) Most intriguingly, the researchers found that the time of year in which a cancer operation took place had a significant influence on the likelihood of the malignancy recurring.

For example, patients who had a high intake of vitamin D, and who also had their surgery in months when sunshine was abundant, were more than twice as likely to be alive five years after cancer surgery compared to those patients who had low vitamin D intake and who also had their operations in the winter.

This was one of the strongest indications so far of the protective, anti-cancer effect of moderate exposure to sunlight. It is also a strong argument for ensuring that you are exposed to a moderate amount of sunshine every week, especially if you are undergoing cancer treatment.

Exactly how vitamin D changes the outcome of cancer surgery is not known. But this finding jibes with many other studies showing that vitamin D inhibits a variety of different types of the disease.

Animal Studies

"Animal studies have shown that treatment of cancer with vitamin D demonstrates both anti-proliferative and anti-invasive properties," said the lead investigator, Wei Zhou, PhD, a research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston. "But we don't know if that is true in humans with cancer….So the best way we can make some sort of association is to look at differences in what happens after treatment of cancer between patients who maintain high levels of vitamin D through their diet and supplements, as well as through sunlight exposure, compared to patients who do not.

"This study in no way suggests that people should try to time their cancer surgeries for a particular season - that would obviously be impossible," Dr. Zhou explained. "But, if validated, it may mean that increasing a patient's use of vitamin D before such surgery could offer a survival benefit."

It will certainly be hard for critics of natural medicine to pick holes in the credentials or methodology of this study. The research team was led by Prof. David Christiani, MD, of Harvard University, and included investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Harvard Medical School. They looked at both disease free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) in 456 patients at these prestigious institutions who had early stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Patients with several different NSCLC subtypes were included in the study. Nine percent of the patients received radiation treatment following surgery, and one percent received chemotherapy.

In the 1970s, the brothers Cedric and Frank Garland of the University of California at San Diego first hypothesized that exposure to solar radiation actually led to decreased cancer incidence through the agency of vitamin D. Evidence for the health benefit of moderate sunlight continues to accumulate. Within the past year there have been two studies from the Cancer Registry of Norway, showing that patients who were diagnosed with breast, colon or prostate cancer during the summer and fall also had the lowest risk of dying from their cancer. These are the seasons in which the blood levels of serum calcidiol, also known vitamin D(3), or its derivative, calcitrol, are at their highest. The Scandinavian authors concluded that "a high level of vitamin D(3) at the time of diagnosis, and thus, during cancer treatment, may improve prognosis of the three cancer types studied" (Robsahm 2004, Moan 2005).

In an award acceptance speech at the 2005 AACR annual meeting, Prof. Edward Giovannucci, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, reported an inverse correlation between a dozen forms of cancer (including cancers of the esophagus, stomach, colon, rectum, pancreas, gall bladder, bile duct, and ovaries) and levels of vitamin D. These observations derive in part from work done at Kyushu University in Japan, showing that exposure to solar radiation reduces the risk of cancers of the digestive organs, even though Japanese people have a relatively high intake of dietary vitamin D through fish consumption (Mizoue 2004). Apparently, there's no substitute for Old Sol!

Actually, the correlation with sunlight and vitamin D is stronger for cancer mortality than it is for incidence, which leads William Grant, PhD, of the Sunlight, Nutrition and Health Research Center (SUNARC), San Francisco, to suggest that "vitamin D is more effective in fighting cancer once it develops rather than preventing it in the first place. This makes sense since carcinogenesis does not involve vitamin D" (Grant 2005). But since we none of us know if we are harboring hidden nests of cancer cells, it would be a good idea to obtain a moderate degree of sun exposure year round.

TO BE CONCLUDED, WITH REFERENCES, NEXT WEEK.

--Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER

The news and other items in this newsletter are intended for informational purposes only. Nothing in this newsletter is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice.

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