High dose vitamin C may stop the progression of leukemia, study reveals

(NaturalHealth365) The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that leukemia – cancer of the blood and bone marrow – claimed 23,564 lives in 2014 alone. Now, exciting new research shows that a six-month regimen of high-dose intravenous vitamin C slowed the progression of leukemia by stopping leukemic cells from multiplying.

The study builds upon other research that demonstrates vitamin C’s potential to inhibit and even kill cancer cells – without harming healthy tissue. Let’s take a closer look at how vitamin C is demonstrating its amazing potential to fight cancer.

Vitamin C stimulates a vital cancer-fighting enzyme

In leukemia, white blood cells fail to mature, so they regenerate themselves and multiply uncontrollably – a process that stops the body from producing the mature white blood cells needed by the immune system to fight infections. Researchers have discovered that a gene mutation plays a major role in the development of many cases of leukemia.

50 percent of patients with chronic myelomonocytic leukemia, 30 percent of patients with pre-leukemia and 10 percent of acute myeloid leukemia patients have a genetic disorder that decreases amounts of TET2 – a vital enzyme that helps undifferentiated cells mature into normal blood cells. This TET2 gene mutation accounts for 42,500 cancers yearly in the United States.

The new study, conducted at Perlmutter Cancer Center at New York University Langone Health and published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Cell, examined vitamin C’s potential to stimulate TET2 – and the results were encouraging.

Genetically restoring TET2 blocks replication of cancer cells and safely kills them

The researchers found that intravenous high-dose vitamin C helps restore TET2 function, causing “faulty” stem cells in bone marrow to die off.

Vitamin C produced results when it was used on human leukemia cells carrying the TET2 mutation – and it also stopped the growth of transplanted leukemia cancer stem cells in mice that had been genetically engineered to lack TET2.

The vitamin achieved this effect by promoting DNA demethylation in the cancerous cells. Researchers also found that combining vitamin C with PARP inhibitors – drugs which cause cancer cell death – improved its effectiveness even more. In fact, vitamin C seemed to have a potentiating effect, making the leukemic cells more vulnerable to the PARP inhibitors.

Study author Benjamin Neel, Ph.D., noted that the team was excited by the prospect that high-dose vitamin C might become a “safe treatment for blood diseases caused by TET2-deficient leukemia stem cells, most likely in combination with other targeted therapies.” Neel called for preclinical and clinical trials to test high-dose intravenous vitamin C in human patients – and for further research to identify other substances that might help to potentiate the vitamin C treatment.

Researchers are particularly hopeful that using vitamin C with cancer drugs could provide an alternative to toxic chemotherapy – which can be dangerous and even fatal to patients with acute myeloid leukemia.

Note: The researchers used extremely high dosages of intravenous vitamin C in the study – amounts that would be impossible to obtain by oral ingestion alone.

Amazing NEWS: Vitamin C has outperformed approved clinical and experimental drugs

Other recent, peer-reviewed research is blazing exciting new inroads into the area of potential uses of this powerful vitamin to stop cancer.

In a study newly published in Oncotarget, researcher found that high-dose vitamin C stopped tumors cold by impairing cancer stem cell metabolism and interfering with their ability to grow and spread.

Researchers noted that the nutrient worked as a pro-oxidant in cancer cells – stripping them of the antioxidant glutathione and producing oxidative stress and apoptosis, or cell death. In addition, vitamin C interfered with glycolysis, the process that creates energy in cell mitochondria.

And, while lethal to cancer cells, it left healthy cells unaffected.

The researchers concluded that vitamin C was a “promising new agent,” and called for more study to explore its use in preventing and slowing tumors.

The team also reported that vitamin C outperformed seven different substances, including stiripinol – an FDA-approved clinical drug – and various experimental medications. Researchers noted that vitamin C was 1,000 times – that’s right, 1,000 times – more effective in combating cancer stem cells than 2-DG, an experimental pharmaceutical drug.

(It is hard to understand why these eye-opening results have received so little attention from mainstream medicine. Especially in light of the fact that – unlike toxic chemotherapy drugs – this essential vitamin has caused few side effects in clinical studies.)

But, I think we can quickly see how this news might be threatening to the profits of the pharmaceutical industry.

The fact is: conventional medicine has long downplayed or ignored promising vitamin C research. But, as forward-thinking, innovative researchers continue to examine vitamin C’s many benefits, its potential to combat cancer may yet be recognized.

Sources for this article include:

MedicalNewsToday.com
Cell.com
SBS.com
NaturalHealth365.com
NewScientist.com