Vitamin D Status of Newly Diagnosed Breast Cancer Patients

Background: Vitamin D is believed to be associated with reduced breast cancer (BC) risk • due to anti proliferative and pro differentiation activities. Vitamin D level of >50ng/ml is reported) to lower the BC risk by 50%. This study compared vitamin D status and animal protein intake of BC women with healthy females. Methods: Newly diagnosed BC patients from National Cancer Institute, Maharagama (n=l 50) and age matched apparently healthy females (n=75) were enrolled. Data on frequency of consumption of animal protein was recorded using an interviewer administered questionnaire. Serum vitamin D status was measured with mini vidas immuneanalyser using an enzyme immunoassay competition method with final fluorescent detection. Results and Discussion: Consumption of meat, fish, egg and dairy products was not significantly different (p>0.05) among BC patients and healthy females. Majority of BC patients and healthy females (> 95%) were not consuming chicken, beef or pork >3times a week. BC patients (44%) and 40% of healthy women consumed fish >3times a week. However egg consumption >3 times a week was rare (13%) among both groups. Majority of BC women (90%), and healthy women (63%) consumed full cream milk> 3 times a week. Only 6% among both groups consumed cheese >3 times per week. None of the women were not on any other supplements. Mean vitamin D concentration of BC women (20.5+5.5 ng/mL) was not significantly different (p>0.05) when compared to healthy women (20.2 ±4.3 ng/mL). Half of BC women and healthy females were vitamin D deficient (< 20 ng/mL). Only 3% of BC women and none of healthy women had vitamin D above 30ng/mL. Conclusion: Serum vitamin D status of breast cancer and apparently healthy women was considerably low among the study sample. This could be due to low consumption of foods rich in vitamin D by both groups. Thus preventive measures are needed to be taken in order to lower the risk associated with low vitamin D status among both BCand healthy women.