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Urgent action needed to improve vitamin D status among older people in England! Hirani V, Tull K, Ali A, Mindell J. Age Ageing. 2009 Nov 23. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 19934073 CONCLUSIONS: poor vitamin D status of older people continues to be a public health problem in England. Hypovitaminosis D is associated with many risk factors and poor health outcomes. There is now an urgent need for a uniform policy on assessment and dietary supplementation of vitamin D in older people to prevent poor vitamin D status and its negative consequences

Robert P. Heaney is John A. Creighton University Professor, Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Hominid evolution took place in an environment (equatorial East Africa) that provided a superabundance of both calcium and vitamin D, the first in available foods and the second through conversion of 7-dehydrocholesterol to pre-vitamin D in the skin, a reaction catalysed by the intense solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Seemingly as a consequence, the evolving human physiology incorporated provisions to prevent the potential of toxic excesses of both nutrients. For vitamin D the protection was of two sorts: skin pigmentation absorbed the critical UV wavelengths and thereby limited dermal synthesis of cholecalciferol; and slow delivery of vitamin D from the skin into the bloodstream left surplus vitamin in the skin, where continuing sun exposure led to its photolytic degradation to inert compounds. For calcium, the adaptation consisted of very inefficient calcium absorption, together with poor to absent systemic conservation. The latter is reflected in unregulated dermal calcium losses, a high sensitivity of renal obligatory calcium loss to other nutrients in the diet and relatively high quantities of calcium in the digestive secretions. Today, chimpanzees in the original hominid habitat have diets with calcium nutrient densities in the range of 2 to 2.5 mmol per 100 kcal, and hunter-gatherer humans in Africa, South America and New Guinea still have diets very nearly as high in calcium (1.75 to 2 mmol per 100 kcal) (Eaton and Nelson, 1991). With energy expenditure of 3 000 kcal per day (a fairly conservative estimate for a contemporary human doing physical work), such diets would provide substantially in excess of 50 mmol of calcium per day. By contrast, median intake in women in North America and in many European countries today is under 15 mmol per day. Two factors altered the primitive situation: the migration of humans from Africa to higher latitude

Prognostic effects of 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels in early breast cancer. Goodwin PJ, Ennis M, Pritchard KI, Koo J, Hood N. J Clin Oncol. 2009 Aug 10;27(23):3757-63. Epub 2009 May 18. PMID: 19451439 DOI: 10.1200/JCO.2008.20.0725 Conclusion Vitamin D deficiency may be associated with poor outcomes in breast cancer.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2009) - A new study has found that the amount of vitamin D in patients being treated for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma was strongly associated with cancer progression and overall survival. The results will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology in New Orleans. Also, several recent reports have concluded that vitamin D deficiency is associated with poor outcomes in other cancers, including breast, colon and head and neck cancer. This is the first study to look at lymphoma outcome

Vitamin D and mortality in older men and women. Pilz S, Dobnig H, Nijpels G, Heine RJ, Stehouwer CD, Snijder MB, van Dam RM, Dekker JM. Clin Endocrinol (Oxf). 2009 Nov;71(5):666-72. Epub 2009 Feb 18. PMID: 19226272 DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2265.2009.03548.x Conclusions Low 25(OH)D levels are associated with all-cause mortality and even more pronounced with cardiovascular mortality, but it remains unclear whether vitamin D deficiency is a cause or a consequence of a poor health status. Therefore, intervention studies are warranted to evaluate whether vitamin D supplementation reduces mortality and cardiovascular diseases.