B Vitamin Is Found to Help People Prone to Some Types of Skin Cancer

I chose to review the article B Vitamin Is Found to Help People Prone to Some Types of Skin Cancer by Andrew Pollack. The article was about how Vitamin B, a very inexpensive vitamin, can reduce the risk of common skin cancers in people prone to that disease. Studies show that a person who took two pills of nicotinamide, a form of vitamin B3, had a 23% lower chance of getting non-melanoma skin cancer. “‘It’s safe, it’s almost obscenely inexpensive and it’s widely available,’ Dr. Diona Damian, the lead investigator of the study, said in a news conference organized by the American Society of Clinical Oncology”. Each of the participate of these experiments had two or more such skin cancers in the previous five years. The article states, “Those who were randomly assigned to take the vitamin had an average of 1.77 new cancers in the year of the study compared with 2.42 cases for those in the placebo group, a risk reduction of 23 percent, after certain statistical adjustments”. Scientists say that there are no side effects to taking the vitamin.

This article has much significance to our society and to humanity. This might be a baby step to finding a cure for skin cancers. The article even states, “Two experts not involved in the study said the results were ‘interesting and potentially important,’ in part because nicotinamide had fewer side effects than the pharmaceutical alternatives for skin cancer prevention.” I think this article has importance to my age group because this new discovering could lessen the chances of kids my age developing cancer later on in life.

This was a very informative and well written article. Before reading this article, I was quite curious and didn’t know much about the studies and experiments of skin cancers being done. By attentively reading this article by Andrew Pollack, I was very informed on the topic. While reading the article, I didn’t have many questions, but when I did, I could easily go back and figure it out based on what Pollack wrote. I really enjoy when authors add statistics into their writing and Pollack did a great job with this. After reading this article, I would definitely like to look more into this topic. Also, I am excited to hear about anymore steps taken in this new discovery.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/14/business/b-vitamin-is-found-to-help-people-prone-to-some-types-of-skin-cancer.html?ref=science

Pollack, Andrew. "B Vitamin Is Found to Help People Prone to Some Types of Skin Cancer." The New York Times. The New York Times, 13 May 2015. Web. 13 May 2015.