Vitamin Information Center

Vitamin C jabs are the new ray of hope for cancerdefine patients with poor chances and few treatment options as a new study found that injecting high dose of vitamin C instead of swallowed can destroy cancer.

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 prognosisdefine 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.

Women who smoke are no more likely to develop lung cancer than men, US researchers have concluded.

There had been conflicting evidence on women’s risk, but the National Cancer Institute study of over 450,000 people found no gender difference.

The study published in Lancet Oncology found a difference of only 0.9% between the risk for men and that for women.

The most recent UK statistics show that in 2006, 23% of men and 21% of women were cigarette smokers.

Lung cancer kills around 30,000 people a year in the UK.

‘Vigorous efforts needed’

The researchers analysed data on smoking habits, diet, exercise and alcohol use for 279,214 men and 184,623 women aged between 50 and 71 living in eight US states.

They then looked at lung cancer rates.

The difference in risk for women and men who smoked was just 0.9%.

Men and women who smoke more than two packs per day were about 50 times more likely to develop lung cancer than people who had never smoked.

The team, led by Dr Neal Freedman, said their study benefited from its size, giving reliable findings

They conclude: “Our findings suggest that women are not more susceptible than men to the carcinogenic effects of cigarette smoking in the lung.

“Vigorous efforts should continue to be directed at eliminating smoking in both sexes.”

Andy McEwen, assistant director of tobacco studies at Cancer Research UK’s Health Behaviour Research Centre, said: “Smoking has a devastating effect on the health of people trapped by their tobacco addiction.

“The risk of a smoker, male or female, developing lung cancer is 15 times greater than that of a non-smoker and smoking continues to be the biggest preventable cause of death for men and women.”

“Smoking accounts for the vast majority of cases of lung cancer worldwide.

“More has to be done to help all smokers to quit if we are to prevent future deaths from lung cancer.”