Low vitamin D can make risk problem breas cancer, breast cancer patients with low levels of vitamin D may have an increased risk of recurrence or death from the disease, a new study reports.

The findings which are expected to be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting, to be held May 31 to June 3 suggest that vitamin D deficiency is very common in women with breast cancer. For these patients, the risk of breast cancer spreading was nearly double compared with those who had healthy vitamin D levels.

And the risk of dying from breast cancer was 75 percent higher in those with low levels of vitamin D, compared with those with healthy levels. Still, the findings are not concrete enough to warrant recommending that breast cancer patients take vitamin D supplements to ward off this risk, the authors report.