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Calcium May Prevent Breast Cancer to Bone

Posted on: Wednesday, 3 October 2007, 15:00 CDT

Dietary calcium might help prevent the spread of advanced breast cancer to bones, Australian researchers suggest.

About 70 percent of patients who develop advanced breast cancer will have secondary tumors in the bone, which leads to cellular processes that physically break down existing bone, leading to further pain and illness that turns bone into an environment conducive to cancer growth, said senior author Colin R. Dunstan of the ANZAC Research Institute in Concord, Australia.

Dunstan and his team compared the effects of a low- and high-calcium diet in mice and found that dietary calcium deficiency was related to a significantly higher increase in cancer cell proliferation and the total proportion of bone that had been penetrated.

The study, published in Cancer Research, found dietary calcium deficiency was related to a significantly higher increase in cancer cell proliferation and the total proportion of bone that had been penetrated.

Many older women in our community are known to be calcium deficient due to low calcium dietary intake or due to vitamin D deficiency, Dunstan said in a statement. These women could be at increased risk for the devastating effects of bone metastases.

Source: United Press International

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