Vitamin C against cancer
The anti-cancer effect of vitamin C has been confirmed
Medical news based on the materials of the University of Kansas Cancer Center:
Researchers establish benefits of high-dose vitamin C for ovarian cancer patientsIntravenous administration of high doses of vitamin C in combination with standard chemotherapy for ovarian cancer reduces the toxic effect of the latter and contributes to the destruction of cancer cells, experts from the Medical Center at the University of Kansas concluded after conducting in vitro studies, on an animal model and on patients.
The results of the work suggesting the possibility of rehabilitation of the use of ascorbic acid in traditional oncology are published in the journal Science Translational Medicine (Ma et al., High-Dose Parenteral Ascorbate Enhanced Chemosensitivity of Ovarian Cancer and Reduced Toxicity of Chemotherapy).
In the 1970s, vitamin C was used as a means of non-standard therapy of oncological diseases, however, despite the confirmed safety of this substance in cancer, there is no unambiguous scientific data on its clinical efficacy. As the lead author of the study, Qi Chen, explained, although there are occasional reports on the effectiveness of ascorbic acid when administered intravenously in cancer, the results of two large-scale clinical trials of oral vitamin C, which proved its ineffectiveness, forced traditional oncologists to abandon this idea. Now ascorbic acid in the treatment of oncological diseases is used only in complementary and alternative medicine.
Chen and her colleagues, in order to test the effect of vitamin C with its intravenous administration, which means a different pharmacokinetics than with oral administration, involved 27 patients with newly diagnosed ovarian cancer at stage 3-4 in clinical trials. All participants received standard chemotherapy with paclitaxel (paclitaxel) and carboplatin (carboplatin), but some of them also intravenously administered high doses of ascorbic acid. The researchers monitored the condition of the participants for five years after treatment and found that vitamin C significantly reduced the toxic effect of chemotherapeutic drugs.
Experiments on an animal model of ovarian cancer have shown that the combination of intravenous ascorbic acid with paclitaxel and carboplatin has an inhibitory effect on tumor development without causing pathological changes in the liver, kidneys and spleen. The authors found that the millimolar concentrations of vitamin C, which is a pro–oxidant, in blood and tissues kill cancer cells without affecting healthy ones, due to the local oxidative stress caused by them – the process of damage as a result of oxidation of cellular DNA and depletion of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) - the source of cell energy.
Based on the identified potential benefits and minimal toxicity of vitamin C, the authors believe that further, more extensive, clinical trials of the use of a combination of intravenous ascorbic acid and standard chemotherapy drugs are needed not only for ovarian cancer, but also for other oncological diseases.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru12.02.2014