NEW ORLEANS —A shortage of vitamin D may increase the death risk in people who are battling a common form of lymphoma, reports Science News. They say the research was reported Dec. 5, 2009 at a meeting of the American Society of Hematology. From 2002 to 2008, researchers analyzed blood samples from 374 newly diagnosed patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, a fast-growing cancer of white blood cells called B cells. Study participants averaged 62 years of age and blood tests revealed half were deficient in vitamin D at the start of treatment, having less than 25 nanograms per milliliter of blood.
During a three-year the follow-up, patients who were deficient in vitamin D were twice as likely to die, compared with patients who had adequate vitamin D blood levels at the outset. Patients with low vitamin D concentrations were also about 50 percent more likely than the others to have their cancer get worse. Patients received standard treatment, including chemotherapy, and the researchers accounted for differences between groups in age and other factors that might bias the comparison.
