Editor's note: For those who want to prevent cancer, vitamin C rich foods like kiwi fruits or taking high doses of vitamin C supplements may help.

By David Liu, Ph.D.

Friday Oct 28, 2011 (foodconsumer.org) -- Many people may not know this:  some alternative doctors have been using intravenous vitamin C for years to treat a variety of malignancies, but few studies reveal the efficacy.

A new study in the Nov 2011 issue of In Vivo shows that IV vitamin C can at least help eliminate side effects of breast cancer treatments such as nausea, loss of appetite, fatigue, depression, sleep disorders, dizziness and hemorrhagic diathesis.

For the study, J. Beuth and colleagues from University of Cologne in Germany treated 53 breast cancer patients in the first postoperative year with IV vitamin C in addition to standard breast cancer therapy for four weeks and then 72 additional weeks without vitamin C treatment and compared symptoms observed in the study patients with those in the control group of 72 patients who received the conventional treatments only.

Patients treated with IV vitamin C complained less about the disease and chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which cause a series of side effects.

The intensity score of symptoms included by the breast cancer treatments were twice as high in the control group, compared to the study group.

The findings suggest that intravenous administration of vitamin C helps breast cancer patients who receive chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

Early studies have shown that vitamin C can help  kill cancer cells.  

A Korean study in the Aug 11, 2009 issue of the Journal of Translational Medicine suggests that high doses of vitamin C may help increase the odds for cancer patients to survive.

The study of rats shows that the animals receiving vitamin C before and after the induction of cancer cells were 20 percent more likely to survive.

C.H. Yeom and colleagues of the Catholic University of Korea in Seoul Korea found vitamin C inhibited the expression of three angiogenesis related genes.  Angiogenesis is necessary for cancer cells to grow.

Biopsy studies and would healing analysis in vivo and in vitro conducted by the researchers confirmed that vitamin C inhibits cancer growth through inhibition of angiogenesis.

Evidence suggests that vitamin C may help more than breast cancer.