Studying Vitamin C in the Fight Against Cancer

Vitamin C could be useful in the fight to end cancer after all. According to a new U.S. study that was published on Monday, using high dose injections of vitamin C on mice greatly reduced the rate of tumor growth.

The American scientist, Linus Pauling, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1954, introduced the idea that vitamin C, also known as ascorbic acid, could be used to help treat cancer in the 1970s. This notion was initially considered controversial and subsequent studies failed to show the benefit of vitamin C, but these studies involved vitamin C being given orally.

The new research team, consisting of researchers at the U.S. government's National Institutes of Health, used injections of the vitamin C to enable a greater concentration to get into the system instead of the previous oral method. They used laboratory mice to implant three types of aggressive cancer cells: glioblastoma brain tumors, ovarian, and pancreatic. The mice that were given the high-dosage injections of the vitamin C experienced tumor growth only about half that of the similar mice that did not receive the injections.

The lead researcher from the study, Dr. Mark Levine of the NIH'S National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, said the key finding from this study is that the vitamin C used as a drug appears to have some promise in treating some types of cancers. The researchers believe that the elevated amounts of the vitamin C generate hydrogen peroxide in the body and it acts against cancer cells. Levine said that the hydrogen peroxide can lead to death of some cancer cells, but it doesn't seem to kill the normal cells. Whey that is, the researchers still do not know. These findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Levine also stated that a recent clinical study that he was involved in, in Canada, showed that similar doses of the vitamin C could be injected into humans with very few side effects. "The thing that's realistic here is that the concentrations that are effective, or similar concentrations, can be achieved in humans," said Levine. The next reasonable step would be to begin conducting studies that test whether this works in humans. "I think we're pretty close to being ready to do that."