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According to this research, it may be critical for patients with advanced melanoma to maintain normal vitamin D levels while using immunotherapy medicines known as immune checkpoint inhibitors. Wiley has published the findings online in CANCER, the American Cancer Society’s peer-reviewed publication.
Vitamin D has numerous effects on the body, including immune system control. To explore if vitamin D levels influenced the efficiency of immune checkpoint inhibitors, researchers examined the blood of 200 patients with advanced melanoma before and every 12 weeks during immunotherapy treatment.
The group with normal baseline vitamin D levels or normal levels acquired with vitamin D supplementation had a 56.0% positive response rate to immune checkpoint inhibitors, compared to 36.2% in the group with low vitamin D levels without supplementation. In these groups, progression free survival (the duration from therapy commencement to cancer progression) was 11.25 and 5.75 months, respectively.
“Of course, vitamin D is not itself an anti-cancer drug, but its normal serum level is needed for the proper functioning of the immune system, including the response that anti-cancer drugs like immune checkpoint inhibitors affect,” said lead author Łukasz Galus, MD, of Poznan University of Medical Sciences, in Poland. “In our opinion, after appropriately randomized confirmation of our results, the assessment of vitamin D levels and its supplementation could be considered in the management of melanoma.”
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