Ovarian Cancer treated by Vitamin D, but fear hypercalcemia (why not just take less Calcium)

Created September 2022

The Effect of Vitamin D and Its Analogs in Ovarian Cancer

Nutrients 2022, 14(18), 3867; https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14183867

Karina Piatek. Martin Schepelmann and Enikö Kallay

Center for Pathophysiology, Infectiology and Immunology, Institute for Pathophysiology and Allergy Research, Medical University of Vienna, Waehringer Guertel 18-20, 1090 Vienna, Austria

Vitamin D fights Ovarian Cancer in many more ways than expensive Vitamin D analogs

Ovarian cancer is one of the deadliest cancers in women, due to its heterogeneity and usually late diagnosis. The current first-line therapies of debulking surgery and intensive chemotherapy cause debilitating side effects. Therefore, there is an unmet medical need to find new and effective therapies with fewer side effects, or adjuvant therapies, which could reduce the necessary doses of chemotherapeutics. Vitamin D is one of the main regulators of serum calcium and phosphorus homeostasis, but it has also anticancer effects. It induces differentiation and apoptosis, reduces proliferation and metastatic potential of cancer cells. However, doses that would be effective against cancer cause hypercalcemia. For this reason, synthetic and less calcemic analogs have been developed and tested in terms of their anticancer effect. The anticancer role of vitamin D is best understood in colorectal, breast, and prostate cancer and much less research has been done in ovarian cancer. In this review, we thus summarize the studies on the role of vitamin D and its analogs in vitro and in vivo in ovarian cancer models.

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