Vitamin D Maintenance Should Be ‘Standard’ for Advanced Melanoma
Source: CureToday, July 2023
A recent study documented the benefits of maintaining normal vitamin D levels for patients with inoperable, locally advanced or metastatic melanoma receiving anti-PD-1 immunotherapy.
Maintaining normal levels of vitamin D “should be a standard procedure allowing the improvement of treatment outcomes” for patients with advanced melanoma who are receiving anti-PD-1 immunotherapy, according to the researcher team behind a recent study.
Among the study’s 200 participants with inoperable, locally advanced or metastatic melanoma who all received anti-PD-1 immunotherapy via Opdivo (nivolumab) or Keytruda (pembrolizumab), the objective response rate (ORR) among patients with low vitamin D levels which were not supplemented was 36.2%, while the response rate was 56% for patients with either normal baseline levels of vitamin D or those who obtained normal levels via supplementation, according to the study.