Vitamin D could be a surprise weapon against cancer, new research suggests.
A study of mice published in the journal Science last week found that eating a diet rich in vitamin D changed the gut microbiome in a way that boosted cancer immunity.
The micronutrient increased levels of the bacterium Bacteroides fragilis, which has been shown to improve cancer immune response.
The mice that received vitamin D showed improved responses to cancer immunotherapy and greater immunity to new tumor development, according to researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in London, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Aalborg University in Denmark.
“What we’ve shown here came as a surprise — vitamin D can regulate the gut microbiome to favor a type of bacteria that gives mice better immunity to cancer,” said senior study author Caetano Reis e Sousa, head of the Immunobiology Laboratory at Crick, in a press release.
“This could one day be important for cancer treatment in humans.”
