The Chemoprotective Role of Vitamin D in Skin Cancer: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Introduction: Research in mice showed that vitamin D receptor deficiency was correlated with an increased rate of non-melanoma skin cancer. Therapeutic supplemental vitamin D has also been reported to reduce cell growth in both melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer. This paper aims to describe the existing research studies that discuss the potential and role of vitamin D in the management of skin cancer.

Methods: Articles were searched from three databases (PubMed, ScienceDirect, Scopus) and manual search. 18 articles were included. These were further divided into in vivo and in vitro studies. The literature search was based on the following Patients, Intervention, Control, and Outcome (PICO) criteria: Patients with any types of skin cancer; Vitamin D and their derivates as the intervention; placebo or standard regimen as control, and survival rate or response rate as primary outcome.

Results: From the three databases, we obtained 802 studies. Prior to screening of the literature obtained, several studies were excluded. In the eligibility assessment, seven studies were excluded due to their outcomes being not eligible for analysis, and two studies were excluded due to inaccessible full texts. The remaining 18 studies were included. Five studies had a clinical research design (randomized controlled trial or interventional study), which use vitamin D3 as vitamin D derivatives and the results showed that the administration of vitamin D3 reduces the proliferation of skin cancer cells. Similar results were also reported in studies with pre-clinical research designs, either in vivo or in vitro, where six were in vivo studies and nine studies were in vitro studies.

Conclusion: Our literature review revealed that that vitamin D derivatives, such as 1,25(OH)2D3 or 20(OH)D3 can effectively reduce the proliferation of skin cancer cells by contributing in the inhibition of cell growth and development, highlighting vitamin D's role as good prognostic factor.

Keywords: basal cell carcinoma; calciferol; melanoma; skin cancer; squamous cell carcinoma; vitamin D3.