Scientists at the German Cancer Research Center have estimated a possible intake of vitamin D at up to 30,000fewer cancer deathsconnected per year. In total, more than 300,000 years of life could be gained. According to their calculations, such a measure also saves enormous healthcare costs. Three clinical studies have already concluded that vitamin D supplementation reduces cancer mortality rates by 13 percent.
Potential Benefits of Taking Vitamin D
For several years now, scientists have been investigating the influence of an adequate supply of the sunshine vitamin on the prognosis of numerous diseases. The focus is particularly on inflammatory diseases, diabetes, respiratory diseases and cancer. In recent years, three meta-analyses of large clinical studies have been published on the question of how aVitamin D supplementation affects cancer mortality. The studies came to the same conclusion: cancer mortality is reduced by around 13 percent for all types of cancer by taking vitamin D. Only methodologically high-quality randomized studies from all parts of the world were included in the meta-analyses. However, it is not yet clear which biological mechanisms might underlie this. However, given the often significant costs of many new cancer drugs, this success often comes with a high price. Vitamin D, on the other hand, is comparatively inexpensive in normal daily doses. Vitamin D deficiency is common in the elderly population and mainly in cancer patients.
The researchers now calculated the costs that vitamin D supplementation would cause for the entire German population over the age of 50. They compared this sum with the potential savings for cancer therapies, which often involve costs in the range of tens of thousands of euros. This happens in advanced cancers in the last months of the patient's life. The scientists based this calculation on a daily administration of 1,000 international units. This is available at a price of 25 euros per person per year. In 2016, around 36 million people over 50 lived in Germany, which led to annual supplementary costs of 900 million euros. In some countries, foods have even been fortified with vitamin D for many years. This is the case, for example, in Finland, where the cancer mortality rate is around 20 percent lower than in Germany. The authorsthis studyrecommend spending about twelve minutes outdoors in the sunshine two to three times a week.
