Fig. 7.

Vitamin D deficiency did not alter cell proliferation rates in tumors, as measured by Mki67 gene expression. Mki67 was measured in matched pairs of normal colonic tissue and colonic tumors from 7-10 rats per treatment group. Expression is represented as fold change in tumor expression versus normal tissue expression; all values have been normalized against the reference gene Gapdh. In general, tumor expression was higher than normal colonic tissue expression. However, no significant difference in tumor Mki67 gene expression was detected between any of the groups, indicating that vitamin D deficiency does not influence tumor cell proliferation rates in vivo (all P>0.27). The number of tumor/normal pair-matched samples analyzed per group were as follows: −D Born (7), −D Ca Cycled (7), +D Ca Cycled (7), +D Born (10).