The super high doses of vitamin C jabs halves the size of brain, ovarian and pancreatic tumours in mice, destroying cancerdefine cells while leaving healthy tissue unharmed. The researchers said that the vitamin may be reacting with the cancer cell chemicals to make acid.
The lead author of the study, Dr Qi Chen, from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland conducted the experiment on mice with aggressive forms of ovarian, brain and pancreatic cancer.
One group of mice was given high super doses of vitamin C jabs (up to 4grams per kilo of body weight) while another group wasn’t given any vitamin. The researchers found that the injections caused the growth and weight of tumours to drop by nearly 50 percent, while in untreated mice, the disease spread rapidly to other organs. There were no signs the cancer had spread in the treated mice.
The US team wrote in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, "The daily treatment significantly decreased growth rates of ovarian, pancreatic and glioblastoma tumours established in mice".
Adding further they said, "Similar pharmacologic concentrations were readily achieved in humans given ascorbate intravenously. This data suggests that ascorbate as a prodrug may have benefits in cancers with poor prognosis
define and limited therapeutic options."
The authors are suggesting that after these successful tests in mice now treatment should be considered for human use at similar levels.
While on the other hand, Cancer Research UK cautioned that other studies suggested high doses of vitamin C might interfere with existing therapies and make them less effective.
Dr Alison Ross, of Cancer Research UK, said: 'This is encouraging work but it's at a very early stage because it involves cells grown in the lab and mice. Much more research is needed before we'll know whether vitamin C could be a viable cancer treatment.'
Vitamin C (chemical name ascorbate) has been part of complementary or alternative cancer treatment for more than 30 years.
It is generally used as hair bleach and now the study shows that it kills cancer cells without harming healthy tissue, which means that the cancer treatment should be free of nausea, pain and hair loss many times associated with cancer medications and would also have the added advantage of being cheap.
Previous studies show that higher intake of vitamin C reduce human risk for gastricdefine, esophageal, pancreatic and lung cancer. Patients with higher levels of ascorbate have been shown to have lower risk of both coronary heart disease, stroke and cataract development.
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