Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: The beneficial effects of vitamin D against gastrointestinal polyps and cancer in the gastrointestinal system as a whole remain unknown and relevance in repeat populations remain contraversial. Also in most studies the role of accompanying hypocalcemia itself is often neglected. For this reason we included only patients with low vitamin D levels and investigated the presence of gastric and colonic polyps.

Methods/design: Between March 2011 and September 2012, we investigated 25(OH) vitamin D levels in patients with clinical suspicion.We then performed colonoscopy and/or endoscopy in patients having clinical indications for these procedures.

Results: A total of 301 patients (175 female, 126 male) were divided into three groups according to their serum 25(OH) vitamin D levels: group 1: 0–10, group 2: 10–20, group 3: 20–30. 246 patients underwent colonoscopy and endoscopy while 55 cases underwent only colonoscopy. There was a total of five cancer cases (two colon, three gastric cancer) and four of these cases belonged to group 1 and one patient to group 2. We found colonic polyps in 29, 44, and 8 cases in groups 1, 2, and 3 respectively.The difference between the groups 1, 2, and 3 by means of polyp presence was significant. We found polyps by upper endoscopy in only 12 cases. We found a significant correlation between colonic polyps and increased age, high Bun and creatinine levels and increased visceral fat but not with BMI, body fat percent, H.pylori presence, SES or SCS. But both endoscopic and colonoscopic polyp presence was found to be significantly increased in diabetic patients.

Conclusion: The severity of vitamin D deficiency is important for both stomach and colon cancers. We emphasize the importance of diabetes mellitus and visceral fat in the prevalance of endoscopic and colonic polyps.Further studies with larger number of patients are needed to confirm our results.