Vitamin C fights prostate cancer - study

A new study suggests that vitamin C or chemically called ascorbic acid, may be enlisted to prevent and treat prostate cancer, at least hormone-refractory prostate cancer.

The study showed intraperitoneal pharmacological doses of vitamin C reduced the tumor size and number in rats that received hormone-refractory prostate cancer PA III cells.

The study was led by Pollard H.B. and colleagues from the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland and published in the May-June 2010 issue of In Vivo.

For the study, researchers subcutaneously implanted the prostate cancer cells into immunologically intact, Lobund-Wistar rats and then administered intraperitoneal pharmacological doses of vitamin C each day for 30 days.

The rats were sacrificed on the 40th day and local tumor weights were measured and metastases were counted.

The researchers found two things. First, the primary tumors were significantly reduced in weight and second,  sub-pleural lung metastases were greatly reduced in number and size.

Additionally, ipsilateral lymph node metastases were reduced from 7 of 15 rats to 1 of 15 rats.

Pollard et al. thus concluded that pharmacological doses of vitamin C suppress the tumor growth and metastases in hormone-refractory prostate cancer.

Vitamin c has been known to many to have anti-cancer properties.  It has been used by alternative physicians to treat a variety of cancers, according to cancertutors.com.

Late Nobel-prize Laureate Linus Pauling recommended that high doses of vitamin C should be used by everyone and the dose needs to be increased as people are getting old.

Acerola, Barbados Cherry, Baibab, Camu Camu, Tropical Guava, Jujube, green kiwifruit, yellow kiwifruit, and Lychee are excellent sources of vitamin C and many other fruits and vegetables contain high levels of the vitamin.

Prostate cancer is diagnosed in about 190,000 men in the United States each year and the disease kills about 35,000 annually in the country, according to the National Cancer Institute.

DL