High-dose vitamin C helps the cancer patient live longer

High doses of vitamin C can combat even the deadliest cancers.

The vitamin can double the survival time of patients with late-stage pancreatic cancer that’s spread, researchers have discovered.

It’s one of the deadliest cancers, and the patient has a life expectancy of just eight months, even after having conventional treatment.  But this doubles to 16 months if high-dose vitamin C is given alongside the chemotherapy, researchers from University of Iowa Health Care have found.

They tested it on 34 patients with stage 4 metastatic pancreatic cancer, who were either given standard chemotherapy or chemotherapy and high-dose vitamin C, given intravenously.   

The trial was such a success that the researchers ended it early and put everyone on the vitamin C drip.  “When we started the trial, we thought it would be a success if we got to 12 months’ survival, but we doubled overall survival to 16 months.  The results were so strong in showing the benefit of this therapy for patient survival that we were able to stop the trial early,” said Joe Cullen, one of the researchers.

The vitamin doesn’t just improve survival time; the patient also feels much better, with fewer side effects from the chemo.

The university has been championing the use of vitamin C for cancer for almost 20 years, and was one of the first to recognise that the vitamin must be given intravenously, and not orally, to have a positive effect.  With IV, high levels of the vitamin reach the blood, and this causes chemical reactions in the cancer cells that make them more vulnerable to chemo.

In a study earlier in 2024, the researchers found that IV vitamin C also helped patients with glioblastoma, a deadly type of brain cancer, live longer.  They are now looking at the effects of the vitamin on patients with non-small cell lung cancer.

Although they have been met with resistance and scepticism from doctors, the researchers have been supported by the US’s National Cancer Institute, which has funded all their studies.

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