Vitamin D and urological cancers

INTRODUCTION: Vitamin D controls calcium and phosphate homeostasis. Additionally, it has been proven that vitamin D is an important modulator of cellular differentiation and proliferation in a number of normal and malignant cells. Vitamin D can regulate proliferation, apoptosis, and cell adhesion at the tumor cell level. It also modifies tumor angiogenesis, invasion, and metastasis and also decreases oxidative DNA damage. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The Medline and Web of Science databases were searched without time limit on October 2015 using the terms ‘vitamin D’ in conjunction with ‘kidney cancer’, ‘bladder cancer’, ‘prostate cancer’, and ‘testis cancer’. Autoalerts in Medline were also run and reference lists of original articles, review articles, and book chapters were searched for further eligible articles. RESULTS: In recent years, vitamin D has received vast attention due to suggestions that it may have a crucial role in the prevention and therapy of various cancers. Many epidemiologic studies have reported the impact of VD3 on preventing several cancers and other pathologies. Assuming that vitamin D status changes cancer risk, enough vitamin D supply would be an easy, economical, and safe cancer incidence and mortality reduction method. However, despite numerous researches, the role of vitamin D in cancer incidence and therapy remains unclear. CONCLUSIONS: The impact of vitamin D is well described in breast, colon, and prostate cancer; yet, there is only little published about other malignancies.