Vitamin C may not just be good for driving away a cold. It could also help kill cancer. Scientists have discovered that intravenous vitamin C combined with conventional chemotherapy can help kill cancer cells.
Vitamin C was actually used in the 1970s as an unorthodox therapy for cancer, according to Fox News. It's also used by complementary and alternative medicine physicians today.
In order to test how vitamin C could be used among patients, the researchers conducted a study on 27 patients who had been newly diagnosed with stage 3 or stage 4 ovarian cancer. In the end, they found that patients who received a high dose of intravenous vitamin C along with conventional cancer therapy experienced fewer toxic effects from the chemotherapy drugs, according to Fox News. The researchers also conducted trials on animal models.
"In cell tissue and animal models of cancer, we saw when you add IV vitamin C it seems to augment the killing effect of chemotherapy drugs on cancer cells," said Jeanne Drisko, one of the researchers, in an interview with Philly.com.
Vitamin C can be found in strawberries, broccoli, oranges and other produce. Its benefits may include protection against immune system deficiencies, cardiovascular disease, prenatal health problems and eye disease, according to WebMD. Now, it seems that Vitamin C has other properties.
"In those patients, we didn't see any ill effects and we noticed they had fewer effects from the chemotherapy," said Drisko in an interview with Philly.com. "It seemed to be protecting the healthy cells while killing the cancer cells."
The findings reveal how Vitamin C could be an important and essential component of cancer therapy in the future. It's possible that the vitamin could potentially be used in combination with other drugs in order to help promote healing and success of treatments.
The findings are published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
