
Vitamin C kills tumor cells with hard-to-treat mutation in mice - forloop
http://news.sciencemag.org/chemistry/2015/11/vitamin-c-kills-tumor-cells-hard-treat-mutation
======
Amorymeltzer
While it is easy to criticize any animal model study, especially when
targeting cancer, we should be HIGHLY skeptical of any mouse study that uses
vitamin C. Why?

Mice synthesize their own vitamin C; humans do not (hence, it should properly
be called ascorbic acid in mice, not vitamin c). The biological pathways
involving this compound are very different between species, and deserve
special consideration.

~~~
cjhveal
The dose makes the poison (or the cure). According to the article they gave
daily injections containing 300 oranges worth of vitamin C (which google tells
me is over 15 grams of vitamin C, an order of magnitude larger than the daily
recommended dose for adult humans).

Certainly being skeptical is still warranted, as OP is correct, there are
significant differences in how this particular compound is handled species to
species. However, simply that mice produce ascorbic acid does not imply that
they produce it in quantity great enough to impact this kind of tumor.

~~~
mtgx
Isn't it dangerous for a human to take that much in a day? What about for a
month every day?

~~~
majkinetor
Not at all.

I experimented 5+ years with it and took on several occasions 100+g per day
with regular input between 10-15g per day.

The only problem I had after 5 years is slight pain in esophagus immediately
after taking C, but it passed after I switched to taking C on full stomach.

Note: you MUST use pure AA powder, nothing else. Timing of C is essential -
you must do it right, or the effects are minimal (you basically have to
simulate the liver ancestral production now disabled in humans).

Vitamin C is a miracle thing IMO, especially 4 kids. My daughter was taking 1g
since age 1 (now has 5) and she has remarkable health (she is sick once or
twice per year for 2-4 days without any complications with being in
kindergarten with 30+ kids since age 1, although the non-vitamin-c factors are
contributing to this picture quite a bit).

Vitamin C is the most effective virus killer in large doses if you time it
right. It is poor antibiotic but you have many options in plant world for
that.

~~~
mb_72
These are fairly typical anecdotal comments made by people pushing Vitamin C
cures / treatment, often in conjunction with mention of 'miracles'. Oblig
xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/1217/](https://xkcd.com/1217/)

~~~
majkinetor
What can I say, it works for me and few more people I know.

But the argument you are giving is quite pointless - vitamin C has no side
effects and it is dead cheap so there is no harm in trying it out for several
months and deciding on your own if its good or not for you.

~~~
gabemart
> vitamin C has no side effects

I'm not aware of evidence that this is true for megadoses (e.g. 10g per day,
as you mentioned).

Given that you are making a claim not supported by mainstream medical
consensus (that megadoses of vitamin C have positive health effects), you are
essentially arguing that megadoses of Vitamin C have a different effect than
regular doses. Given that you admit that megadoses have a different effect to
regular doses, what is your evidence that megadoses have no side effects?

~~~
liberale
Toxicity of vit-c is very low. Death by vit-c overdose is un-heard of.
Intaking enough vit-c to cause death, could be due to sheer weight of
substance intaken rather than bio-chemical function of vit-c.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C#Overdose](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C#Overdose)

Also studies conducted on animals (especially primates) that cannot synthesize
vit-c on their own, show that they intake about upto 80x the RDA value of
vitamin-c. So, humans intake as low as 1.25% of vit-c levels that monkeys eat.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C#Daily_requirements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C#Daily_requirements)

Most often than not, RDA values are a joke and should be treated as bare
minimum levels to prevent diseases such as scurvy and not as the optimum
level. Sub-clinical deficiency in essential vitamins and minerals always
happen.

~~~
majkinetor
Correcrt. Primates take vit. C in grams naturally for example.

~~~
liberale
Do you have any comprehensive resource on timing Vit-C supplements? Also what
form of supplement & which brand did you intake? Liposomal vit-c?

Do you also have any comprehensive resources that explains if vit-c
supplements can affect recovery from lifting weights or general exercise?

~~~
majkinetor
> Do you have any comprehensive resource on timing Vit-C supplements?

There isn't any that I am aware of except bowel tolerance method. IMO, timing
during healthy state is relaxed - twice per day is probably enough for most
people; during stress however individual dose shouldn't be higher but should
be taken more frequently (until bowel starts to complain, which means C is not
absorbed any more and passes to colon where it causes diarrhea trough
osmosis). What is remarkable here is the difference between bowel tolerance in
healthy (low) and disease (high) state which suggests that vitamin C
absorption increases.

See my answer here: [http://www.paleohacks.com/vitamins/vitamin-c-
supplementation...](http://www.paleohacks.com/vitamins/vitamin-c-
supplementation-9354#axzz1dTP3TGk6)

> Also what form of supplement & which brand did you intake? Liposomal vit-c?

I take pure synthetic AA with sodium bicarbonate half of the time (3-5g x2). I
don't have experience with liposomal vit-c but I am sure it is way better then
regular C, altho far more expensive.

> Do you also have any comprehensive resources that explains if vit-c
> supplements can affect recovery from lifting weights or general exercise?

I don't have one at hand now. Some people think it prevents adaptation during
exercise and don't take it. I personaly think it reduces stress so it simply
gives you an option to work more. Since exercise can actually reduce your
immune system if you overdo it or have concurrent stressor, AA intake will
certainly be more beneficial on the long run then any supposed adaptation
shortcomings.

~~~
liberale
Awesome, thanks a lot.

------
sbierwagen
On a side note, Linus Pauling was notorious for, late in life, after winning
all his Nobels and other such prizes, pushing the idea that megadoses of
Vitamin C would cure all cancers:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling#Medical_research...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling#Medical_research_and_vitamin_C_advocacy)

[https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/high-dose-vitamin-c-
and...](https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/high-dose-vitamin-c-and-cancer-
has-linus-pauling-been-vindicated/)

He died in 1994, of cancer.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>He died in 1994, of cancer.

Why is this brought out in such a dismissing and ironic way? He claimed that
there may be some treatments with Vitamin C, not that if you take a little a
day you'll be immortal. Hell, there are so many different types of cancer,
that even if megadosing C helped with one it probably wouldn't help with all.

He lived to his 90s. At that point it was either cancer or heart disease that
kills people. That fact that he lived to 93 is pretty impressive in itself.

As someone who recently went on Vitamin D supplements due to low D in my
bloodstream, I find it incredibly interesting how medicine is always changing.
This knee-jerk skeptic idea about how everything but the current accepted
status quo is "quackery" and mocking guys like Pauling is reprehensible. Just
a few years ago, no one was checking Vitamin D levels. Now my depression and
lethargy have been turned way down as my Vitamin D increases.

Hell, I remember being a teen with ulcers and being told to lay off the spicy
foods. I tried to explain to the doctor that I never eat that and he shrugged
and wrote me a script for Zantac, it being prescription-only at the time. A
few years later H. pylori's role in ulcer creation was revealed and now the
standard treatment isn't large doses of zantac, but two weeks of amoxicillin.
My ulcers magically went away after that treatment.

Medicine is one of things that moves fast and the jury is still out on a lot
of marginalized treatments, concepts, and research. I wouldn't be surprised if
Pauling's research eventually fleshed out into some kind of cancer treatment,
or at least as a supplemental treatment.

~~~
pluckytree
I never understood the mocking, either, especially since he’s been proven
extremely right about the ill-effects of consuming processed sugars. I suspect
it’s rooted in his anti-nuclear and anti-war views and it just grew from
there. His views on Vitamin C were just a convenient target.

It’s uncomfortable to those with analytical minds to accept the fact that we
know so little about the human body and how it works. Studies are always
contradicting each other because the scientific method dictates that studies
must be reduced to the minimum of variables. But the body is far too complex
for that. Most of what I was taught nutritionally in school as a kid was
wrong. Most of the health advice was wrong. We were told butter is evil and we
should eat margerine. We were told fat was evil and that cholesterol causes
heart disease despite no evidence other than correlation. We don’t know how or
even if consumed cholesterol gets turned into cholesterol in the bloodstream.
It’s virtually universally believed that salt is bad despite it being an
essential nutrient. It’s universally believed that sun is bad and we must
slather ourselves with sunscreen and now we all have Vitamin D deficiencies.
Read the literature that comes with any prescription drug and there will be a
paragraph explaining that they have no idea how the drug works. Many are no
more effective than a placebo. There’s a perception that has persisted most of
my life that we are always at a point where we have these things figured out,
but ten years later they are proven wrong, but we don’t seem to notice that.

There is an almost religious fervor surrounding science when it comes to our
health and nutrition. Lots of research in the past few years surrounds gut
bacteria, something that wasn’t even on the charts even 10 years ago. Now we
are realizing that we not only know nothing, we know less than nothing.

I don’t think Pauling will be vindicated on Vitamin C because this came from a
time when it was universally thought that there was a pill or an injecton for
anything and we just had to discover it. If you read Pauling’s books, you’ll
realize that he never advocated it as a panacea, but part of a complete
dietary and mental regimen. His research is compelling and it’s not hard to
see how he came to the conclusions that he did.

It’s good to hear I’m not the only one learning from history and realizing the
uncomfortable fact that we know so little and this treatment of ulcers is the
exception rather than the rule. How did we not discover this was bacterial for
so long? It’s not like this is the 19th century after all.

~~~
Retric
Nutrition has changed far less over the last 50 years than you might think.
The real issue is condensing it into sound bytes.

In a sound bite X More! vs. X Less! has a lot to do with peoples eating habits
and overall health not just how good or bad X is.

Especially when it often breaks down as Benefits A, B, C vs. problems X, Y, Z.
Yes, sometimes we add a benefit or risk to the list and or change the risk
weights slightly, but rarely do things change all that much from one decade to
the next.

~~~
prodmerc
I'm not very knowledgeable in this topic, but I think it's changed a lot. The
way food is processed changes the way we're absorbing it.

Today's bread, milk, cheese, veggies, fruits are a bit different than 50 years
ago - they last longer, taste different, probably because of how they're
processed.

That lack of bacteria that makes things go bad faster should have a different
effect on our bodies, no?

~~~
Retric
That's got little to do with what I meant.

Replace "Nutrition", with "Nutrition Science" or "Our understanding of the
body's need for Nutrition" in my comment.

------
mcone
This seems to contradict another recent study [1] that found that Vitamin C
promoted cancer (melanoma) growth.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-
health/wp/2015/1...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-
health/wp/2015/10/14/antioxidants-may-give-a-boost-to-cancer-cells-making-
them-spread-faster-study-suggests/)

~~~
dualogy
That's the nasty thing about cancerous cells, they can adapt to "feed" (via
blood) on a wide range of macro- (glucose, protein, fatty acids, even ketones
for some rare types) and micro-nutrients (vitamins, "antioxidants") just like
"healthy" cells.

What baffles me is that even autophagy either doesn't seem to always work
(easy to induce by water-fasting for a couple of weeks) --else every sufferer
would do so until in remission-- or that we still don't seem to have
pharmaceutical ways of jumpstarting/forcing "99% effective" autophagy..

------
acd
Is this why taking Vitamin C is good when you start to get a cold?

~~~
zappo2938
Vitamin C has been proven to not have an effect on viral colds either way.[1]
Vitamin D on the other hand has been proven to be an immune system
modulator.[2] Unlike Vitamin C, most people develop Vitamin D deficiency.[3] I
strongly advice you and everybody based on these studies to get yearly blood
work and talk to a doctor about taking 4000IU daily supplement of Vitamin D.
Also massive doses of Vitamin D can have negative effects.

As for Vitimin C, just because someone is a Noble Prize winner or brain
surgeon doesn't mean they are an authority on all things. Ben Carson makes my
point.

[1]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23440782](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23440782)

[2][https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870528/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870528/)

[3][http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vitamin-d-
deficien...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vitamin-d-deficiency-
united-states/)

~~~
majkinetor
Vitamin C doesn't cure common cold, but it sure as hell a) shortens it b)
prevents complications (which may rise to be chronic).

What vitamin C does is prevent common cold, if taken the right way.

Pauling cure for common cold was never really tested. All papers on common
cold used very small doses, almost all bellow 1g. Paulling advocated 1-2g
every hour. I tried it and it works for me, but timing is crucial - it must be
taken on first signs of disease, it wont do much if you delay that.

~~~
bitL
Did you try taking zinc right after an onset of symptoms? I experimented with
that one and had like 50% probability of getting over some common viroses
within one day.

~~~
majkinetor
Yes i did. Alone it isnt that effective as C. Cobination is the best. Must be
megadoze zinc too - 50 to 100 mg.

------
api
Lots of mice studies don't translate well into humans. This one is highly
specific -- a specific mutation. It's unlikely to have much bearing on real
world cancer.

~~~
nonbel
>[Supp Methods:]

"To test the effect of vitamin C, two million HCT116 or VACO432 cells were
injected subcutaneously into the flank of 6 to 8-week-old female athymic nude
mice (Harlan, Indianapolis, IN). After 7-10 days, mice with tumors of 40-60
mm3 were randomly divided into two groups. One group was treated with freshly
prepared vitamin C (sodium ascorbate in 400 ul PBS, 4 g per kilogram of body
weight) by intraperitoneal (IP) injection twice a day (HCT116: n=6, VACO432:
n=6). Control group mice were treated with PBS instead of vitamin C with the
same dosing schedule (HCT116: n=4, VACO432: n=7)."

[...]

[Caption Fig 2:]

"Tumor sizes were measured 2-3 times per week in an unblinded manner."

[http://www.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aaa5004](http://www.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aaa5004)

Not only are they mice, but they have no immune system[1]. Also, the dose of
vitamin C is like consuming an entire bottle twice a day (~240 g)[2]. They are
honest about the lack of blinding, which is good, but obviously that should
make us wary of these findings. Also, they do not report tumor size before
splitting into treatment vs control groups (only saying mice with 40-60 mm^3
tumors were used). Put the larger ones in the control group and you can easily
appear to be slowing tumor growth for totally artefactual reasons.

For example, start with low initial (40) and high initial (60) cells in two
different mice. If the cells all divide every day how many do you expect after
1:3 days. Low: 40,80,160; High: 60,120,240; Difference: 20,40,80. The
difference seems to grow just due to the starting conditions, growth rates
were the same. So these results are uninterpretable without knowing the
starting tumor sizes.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nude_mouse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nude_mouse)

[2] [http://www.allergyresearchgroup.com/buffered-
vitamin-c-240-g...](http://www.allergyresearchgroup.com/buffered-
vitamin-c-240-grams-8.5-oz-powder)

~~~
nonbel
>"Vitamin C treatment significantly reduced tumor growth compared to vehicle
control treatment (Fig. 2B)."

This is a perfect example of what is wrong with biomed research. Just because
the null hypothesis of no difference is rejected does not mean it is for your
favorite reason. There are other reasons for this difference. For example, as
mentioned above, perhaps the initial tumor size was different (which we cannot
see since the size of the points in figure 2 correspond to ~50 mm^3 on the y
axis).

------
empath75
Kind of depressing that the study to investigate vitamin c injections won't
get funded because drug companies can't sell it.

~~~
epistasis
Well, it won't get funded by a _company_ unless there's a profit incentive,
however there's other funding avenues for clinical trials like this. Besides
applying for grants (which is extremely slow and extremely time consuming),
research institutions often have small amounts of funds for running a trial in
house, especially for something like this which only involves a few gene tests
and an inexpensive treatment.

------
ant6n
Vitamin C correlated with dead of tumor cells with hard-to-treat mutation in
mice

