Vitamin C helps the asthmatic child, research confirms

Vitamin C can help the asthmatic child, a fact that has been known since the 1940s -and which has been tested successfully this week.
Giving just 0.2 grams of vitamin C every day to the asthmatic child increases lung capacity by 37 per cent, researchers from Tanta University in Egypt have found.  The effect was greater in the younger children – usually those aged between seven and eight years; lung capacity improved by just 21 per cent in children aged up to 10 years, they found.
The vitamin also works better in children whose asthma is mild.  It had the smallest effect on older children whose asthma was severe.
Their findings may explain why vitamin C therapy has not been adopted as a standard therapy since it was first suggested in the 1940s.  The results are variable, and seem to depend on the age of the child and the severity of the condition.
But in younger children with mild asthma, the results are every bit as promising as those that can be expected from a drug.
(Source: Clinical and Translational Allergy, 2011; 1: 9).