Cancer Treatment: Vitamin C Could Potentially Prevent And Treat Cancer; Study Finds

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Apr 03, 2017 02:21 PM EDT

Vitamin C is a potential cure for cancer, a new study suggests. Researchers found that standard cancer treatment with the combination of vitamin C reduces progression of the disease.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling alongside surgeon Ewan Cameron first theorized that vitamin C could treat people who have cancer. Further studies were then conducted to find evidence of the said vitamin for cancer treatment, Medical News Today reported. The experimental animals and cancer cell cultures showed that a high concentration of ascorbic acid might inhibit and treat cancer.

Other recent studies also analyzed the combined effect of vitamin C and traditional cancer treatment. Eventually, some of the research presented that the mixture of therapy delay progression of the disease. On the other hand, other claimed that the side effects of chemotherapy were lessened among those who received vitamin C as well.

In the study, vitamin C was administered through an intravenous infusion. It has a short life span of only two hours in the human body so it must be given in high doses as a cancer treatment.

The latest clinical trial study involved the administration of vitamin C between 800 and 1,000 times daily to patients with brain and lung cancer. It was led by scientists at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Their findings were published in the journal Cell Press.

The first-phase human safety trial involved 11 patients suffering from brain cancer. They underwent standard cancer treatment such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy alongside intravenous infusions of vitamin C. Patients tolerated well the treatment, and they showed very few minor side effects of the two commonly used therapy.

The second phase of the clinical trials will involve the study of vitamin C’s effects as a cancer treatment in participants with stage four lung cancer. It will also include patients with intensely aggressive brain tumors like glioblastoma.

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