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- Aug 2018
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Cancer treatments are often hard on patients, but the side effects and challenges are necessary to control or even destroy tumor cells. Now researchers say there may be a way to make those treatments work even better. In a study published in Cancer Cell, scientists say that giving people high doses of vitamin C during treatment may weaken cancer cells and make them more vulnerable to the effects of chemotherapy and radiation. In the study, which was designed to determine if vitamin C in high doses was safe, 11 people with an aggressive brain cancer called glioblastoma were treated with vitamin C intravenously three times a week for nearly two months. The dose was increased gradually while the people underwent radiation therapy, to ensure that enough vitamin C remained in the blood. The people in the trial reported no additional side effects or adverse symptoms associated with the vitamin, only those associated with normal chemotherapy and radiation treatments. The study was not structured to look at how effective the vitamin C was. But the researchers note that so far, half of the people in the study were alive nearly two years later. The average survival for the disease is generally around a year.
IV vit C increases the efficiency of chemo and radiation (therapeutic effect of IV VC per se was not assessed).
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