Pancreatic cancer patient survival doubled with high dose of common vitamin, study finds
High doses of vitamin C could be a new breakthrough in treating cancer.The University of Iowa Health Care Carver College of Medicine has shared results from a randomized, phase 2 trial testing the impact of adding high-dose vitamin C to intravenous chemotherapy treatments for pancreatic cancer patients.The researchers found that administering 75 grams of vitamin C three times a week doubled overall survival rates of patients with late-stage metastatic pancreatic cancer from eight months to 16 months.The study, published in the journal Redox Biology, also found that progression-free survival was extended from four to six months.Lead researcher Joseph Cullen, MD, University of Iowa professor of surgery and radiation oncology, shared in an interview with Fox News Digital that the “groundbreaking” findings are the result of 20 years of research on vitamin C.After testing vitamin C in the lab, Iowa researchers found that using vitamin C in much higher doses “worked great” in killing cancer cells.“We found that at these high doses, ascorbate [vitamin C] actually generates hydrogen peroxide,” Cullen said.“And the hydrogen peroxide is what kills the cancer cells.”The patients who received vitamin C in the phase 2, FDA-approved trial also seemed to “better tolerate the chemotherapy they were given,” according to the researcher.“Therefore, they got more chemotherapy for longer periods of time and larger doses of chemotherapy, which also would kill the tumor cells,” he added.Intravenous vitamin C could also help combat other kinds of cancer, according to Cullen, who mentioned that his colleagues are looking into treating lung and brain cancer.Dr.
Georgios Georgakis, a surgical oncologist at Stony Brook Medicine in New York, noted that these findings could “potentially be a breakthrough” for cancer patients.“It seems to be working synergistically with chemotherapy,” Georgakis, who was not involved in the study, said in a separate conversa...