Vitamin D May Help In Prostate Cancer

Men dying from prostate cancer may be able to extend their lives, thanks to a potent form of vitamin D developed at Oregon Health & Science University. A new study considered men who had advanced tumors growing despite surgery or radiation and subsequent drug treatment. Doctors now give such patients the chemotherapy docetaxel, which lets them live for about 16 months, on average. Adding the experimental vitamin pill DN-101 to that chemotherapy increased the average expectancy to roughly two years. A two-year survival "is the highest ever seen in a randomized study," said Dr. Bruce Montgomery, a Seattle Cancer Care Alliance prostate cancer expert who was not involved in the research. "It clearly is a big step forward." Although researchers know DN-101 added at least seven months to the average survival, they can't yet calculate the new median life expectancy, because half the men who took DN-101 in the study are still alive. The treatment "has a lot of guys I see every day getting a meaningful chunk of extra time, without any extra side effect," said Dr. Tomasz Beer, the OHSU Cancer Institute scientist who helped develop the drug. Such late-stage cancers kill more than 30,000 U.S. men every year, according to the American Cancer Society.