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The vitamin that alters the microbiome and protects against cancer

2024-06-08 16:26:00, Shëndeti CNA
The vitamin that alters the microbiome and protects against cancer
Illustrative photo

A diet with sufficient amounts of vitamin D can change gut bacteria, providing better and stronger immunity against cancer.

With more and more cases of cancer appearing at younger and younger ages, the scientific community's search for ways of prevention and treatment is endless. These include a newer experimental research effort by researchers at the Francis Crick Institute, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Aalborg University in Denmark.

In their latest research, published in Science, they found that vitamin D encourages the growth of a type of gut bacteria in mice, boosting immunity to cancer. Specifically, they observed that laboratory mice fed a vitamin D-rich diet had better immune resistance to experimentally transplanted cancers and improved response to immunotherapy.

This result was verified when gene editing was used to remove a protein that binds vitamin D in the blood and keeps it out of the tissues.

Vitamin D, also known as the sunshine vitamin as sunlight increases its production, is found in foods such as fatty fish, eggs and fortified foods.

The role of the microbiome

The research team found that vitamin D acts on intestinal epithelial cells, which in turn increase the amount of a bacteria called Bacteroides fragilis. The special microbe gave the test animals stronger, cancer-fighting immunity as the transplanted tumors didn't grow much, but researchers aren't yet sure how.

Extending their study and aiming to test whether the bacteria could provide better immunity to cancer, they gave mice on a normal diet Bacteroides fragilis. These mice were also better able to resist tumor growth, but not when the mice were fed a vitamin D-deficient diet.

In the past, previous studies have suggested a link between vitamin D deficiency and cancer risk in humans, although the evidence was inconclusive. Furthermore, although the bacterium Bacteroides fragilis is also found in the human microbiome, more studies will be needed to fully understand the effect of vitamin D on immune resistance to cancer through the same mechanism./ CNA





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