Relationship Between Vitamin D Blood Levels and Cancer Development in Renal Transplant Patients: A Case-Control Study.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc, published as an observational study.

The main aim of the present study was to determine the relationship between calcidiol blood levels and cancer development in KT recipients.

Why It Was Studied

Malignancy is one of the most common long-term complications in renal transplant patients, often related to immunosuppressive treatment although other factors could be considered.

Who Took Part

The study group was 738 patients.

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults, middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

This was a retrospective observational case-control study including patients who received transplants in their hospital from 2003 to 2009 with a follow-up period to 2015.

A total of 738 patients were included; 94 of them developed malignancy process, 80 of whose tumor data were analyzed in the cancer group, and the rest composed the control group.

How the Study Was Run

At the moment of cancer presentation, age, sex, primary kidney disease, time after surgery, immunosuppressant schedule, and 25OH-D blood levels were collected.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Case-Control Studies, Immunosuppressive Agents, Incidence, Kidney Diseases, Kidney Transplantation, Neoplasms and Postoperative Complications.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is an observational study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in 738 patients.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Results are reported in around 8 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2016 (Transplantation proceedings), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc compound page, all human trials.