Vitamine C bij kanker*
Uit een kleine studie blijkt dat intraveneuze toediening van vitamine C de overlevingsduur bij
alvleesklierkanker wel kan verdubbelen. Behalve de wekelijkse chemokuur kregen de patiënten ook wekelijks 50 tot 125 gram vitamine C per infuus toegediend. Alvleesklierkanker is zeer moeilijk te bestrijden en binnen 1 jaar na de diagnose leeft nog slechts 20% van de patiënten. Vitamine C zorgde niet alleen voor langere overlevingskans doch ook voor minder gewichtsverlies.
IV vitamin C doubles survival time of pancreatic cancer patients in new clinical trial
A small Phase I clinical trial in the U.S. has just shown that adding IV (intravenous) vitamin C to a common chemo drug for pancreatic cancer extended patients' average survival time to 12 months, compared to historical survival times of 5.65 months for such patients. More remarkable is that three of the patients were still alive at the end of the trial (two at 15 months, one at 29 months survival time) which means overall survival could further increase.
Phase I trial to test IV vitamin C together with standard chemo
Pancreatic cancer strikes 44,000 Americans every year and is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related death in the U.S. Despite conventional medicine's best efforts, the mortality rate of pancreatic cancer remains tragically high at 80 percent in the first year after diagnosis. Because of this, doctors have started looking to complementary, natural treatments as a means of improving patients' prognosis - and IV vitamin C has now done exactly that with remarkable, clinically demonstrated
results.
Doctors at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine ran a Phase I study in which 50 to 125 grams of vitamin C were infused into patients once a week on a weekly cycle. The standard chemo drug for pancreatic cancer was also administered on a weekly cycle as usual. The average treatment duration was six months (range: 60 to 556 days) during which patients lost an average of only 11 pounds, which is much less than expected. Side effects of the IV vitamin C treatment were generally mild and included diarrhea and dry mouth. Apart from increasing survival time to 12 months, the IV vitamin C therapy also increased progression-free survival to 26 weeks (12.7 weeks have been reported in other trials). The researchers did not report on overall tumor size development except for one patient who experienced a dramatic nine-fold reduction in the size of the primary tumor after four months of treatment.
The case for IV vitamin C is stronger than ever
This application of IV vitamin C is not new. In lab studies, high-dose vitamin C has proven to be potently cytotoxic to a wide variety of cancer cell lines as well as to boost the cytotoxicity of several common chemotherapy drugs. This has been further confirmed in animal studies, where IV vitamin C decreases the growth rates of liver, ovarian, pancreatic, and glioblastoma tumors with dosages easily achievable in
humans.
In human trials, this therapy has been shown to significantly improve quality of life for breast cancer patients and for patients of multiple other cancers. Just weeks ago, another study showed that IV vitamin C significantly reduced inflammation markers in 76 percent of cancer patients, which is important for a better prognosis. Just as impressively, the same trial showed that IV vitamin C decreased tumor markers in 77 percent of prostate cancer patients and 73 percent of breast cancer patients.
Important lessons from past studies
Those considering IV vitamin C therapy for any cancer should keep in mind important lessons from other trials. Namely, patients who begin this therapy earlier tend to respond better, as do patients who undergo more vitamin C
infusions.
The doctors who ran this pancreatic cancer study are calling for Phase II trials to verify the results on a larger scale. However, as IV vitamin C therapy is already available in clinics throughout the U.S. and has demonstrated few adverse events (even in the current trial), pancreatic cancer patients and their oncologists should urgently consider the option of IV vitamin C in addition to standard therapies in order to improve survival time. (Maart 2013)
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