Vitamin C and Cancer
Friday, June 18, 2010 at 2:29PM This reference from the Sloan Kettering Institute contains many facts about Vitamin C and Cancer.
Remember, this is just one of many possible different theories of how vitamin C influences cancer. The following article is copied (while a link would serve to take you to this article, too many times the link is eliminated and the articles get lost) from Johns Hopkins Medical research:
How Vitamin C Stops Cancer
ScienceDaily (Sep. 12, 2007) — Nearly 30 years after Nobel laureate Linus Pauling famously and controversially suggested that vitamin C supplements can prevent cancer, a team of Johns Hopkins scientists have shown that in mice at least, vitamin C - and potentially other antioxidants - can indeed inhibit the growth of some tumors ¯ just not in the manner suggested by years of investigation.
"The potential anticancer benefits of antioxidants have been the driving force for many clinical and preclinical studies," says Dang. "By uncovering the mechanism behind antioxidants, we are now better suited to maximize their therapeutic use."
"Once again, this work demonstrates the irreplaceable value of letting researchers follow their scientific noses wherever it leads them," Dang adds.
The authors do caution that while vitamin C is still essential for good health, this study is preliminary and people should not rush out and buy bulk supplies of antioxidants as a means of cancer prevention.
The Johns Hopkins investigators discovered the surprise antioxidant mechanism while looking at mice implanted with either human lymphoma (a blood cancer) or human liver cancer cells. Both of these cancers produce high levels of free radicals that can be suppressed by feeding the mice supplements of antioxidants, either vitamin C or N-acetylcysteine (NAC).
However, when the Hopkins team examined cancer cells from cancer-implanted mice not fed the antioxidants, they noticed the absence of any significant DNA damage. "Clearly, if DNA damage was not in play as a cause of the cancer, then whatever the antioxidants were doing to help was also not related to DNA damage," says Ping Gao, Ph.D, lead author of the paper.
That conclusion led Gao and Dang to suspect that some other mechanism was involved, such as a protein known to be dependent on free radicals called HIF-1 (hypoxia-induced factor), which was discovered over a decade ago by Hopkins researcher and co-author Gregg Semenza, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Program in Vascular Cell Engineering. Indeed, they found that while this protein was abundant in untreated cancer cells taken from the mice, it disappeared in vitamin C-treated cells taken from similar animals.
"When a cell lacks oxygen, HIF-1 helps it compensate," explains Dang. "HIF-1 helps an oxygen-starved cell convert sugar to energy without using oxygen and also initiates the construction of new blood vessels to bring in a fresh oxygen supply." ref ref
Some rapidly growing tumors consume enough energy to easily suck out the available oxygen in their vicinity, making HIF-1 absolutely critical for their continued survival. But HIF-1 can only operate if it has a supply of free radicals. Antioxidants remove these free radicals and stop HIF-1, and the tumor, in its tracks. (Or at least slow it down significantly to allow drugs time to complete process. ref)
The authors confirmed the importance of this "hypoxia protein" by creating cancer cells with a genetic variant of HIF-1 that did not require free radicals to be stable. In these cells, antioxidants no longer had any cancer-fighting power.
The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Authors on the paper are Dean Felsher of Stanford; and Gao, Huafeng Zhang, Ramani Dinavahi, Feng Li, Yan Xiang, Venu Raman, Zaver Bhujwalla, Linzhao Cheng, Jonathan Pevsner, Linda Lee, Gregg Semenza and Dang of Johns Hopkins.
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
NOTES: This is an example of connecting body nutrient functions to a diseased condition from increasing knowledge. With this knowledge, the results now have to be applied in human studies to see if this same process occurs. Here is another reference about this from the view of Hypoxia, lack of Oxygen in cancer cells making them change to get energy by fermentation or glycolysis instead of respiration. Here is link that describes these two processes.
SIDEBAR: Looking at prostate cancer, check out this approach to HIF-1a action. ref Since this is a response to the amount of oxygen in the system, the value of exercise is connected.
Vitamin C is usually associated with preventing colds, but that is just one side function from anti-oxidant activity while the primary function for vitamin C is to assist in collagen production. Blood vessel walls, ligaments, tendons, and bones all need collagen for integrity. Plus vitamin C is also involved in the production of the neurotransmitter serotonin.
UPDATE: Vitamin C injected into the body by I.V. can reach pharmacological levels to influence H2O2 (Hydrogen Peroxide) (ref) production. ref This mechanism is why the HIF-1 is reduced by vitamin C, BUT only when injected by I.V. Animal studies report that cancerous tumors are growing slower and/or increasing tumor cell death rates. Phase I human trials appear positive. More research should be forth coming soon. ref ORAL intake of vitamin C DOES NOT REACH THIS LEVEL. Research studies using a Vitamin C oral approach testing for cancer reduction will fail every time.This next reference describes some of the mechanisms between oral versus IV for vitamin C dosages. ref
FDA Update: After a reported use of IV vitamin C benefited a disease condition, the FDA increased standards on liquid vitamin C manufactureres and is considering changing IV liquid vitamin C treatment into a drug status. Some websites suggested incorrectly that the FDA had banned the manufacture of liquid vitamin C. The letter from the FDA that mentions this issue (plus e-ferol) has been neither moved or taken off the FDA's website. Since vitamin C cannot be patented, no company would spend the millions needed to get drug approval for IV vitamin C unless the FDA has first declared that it is a drug and allows a patent. Vitamin C is very non-toxic according to past IV clinical use. The FDA has used this approach already of changing a vitamin to drug status with other nutrients.
Can you see other implications from this law of injectable vitamins being drugs? What about the vitamins and minerals added to IV bags for hospital patients? Does this turn them into drugs?
NOTE: The E-ferol issue mentioned in the letter by the FDA was indeed a tragedy. Further studies revealed the vitamin E by itself might not have been the sole cause, it may have been the combination of emulsifiers polysorbate 80 and 20 acting on such small bodies that damaged the liver and immune response....
CAUTION: ****There are a number of nutrients that may exhibit both anti- and pro- cancer effects. IT ALL DEPENDS UPON THE DOSAGE AND RESULTING BLOOD LEVELS. Some nutrients have benefits at lower amounts but not at higher, others at middle amounts and not at either lower or higher, and then there are some that need very large amounts to produce therapeutic benefits, like vitamin C may need I.V. to get a large enough amount for certain cancer benefits. Sometimes the wrong amount could even have the opposite influence and be cancer promoting, such as Folic Acid appears to exhibit after tumors develop, or NAC. ref ******
THIS NEEDS A LOT MORE ATTENTION IMMEDIATELY, LIKE NOW!
Reader Comments