Study finds vitamin C may help to fight melanoma, breast cancer

Scientists at Dr Rath Research Institute have found that intake of higher doses of vitamin C, also known as ascorbic acid or ascorbate, may help in preventing melanoma and breast cancer, by delaying the progression and suppressing of metastasis.

The researchers under the supervision of Dr Mathias Rath have conducted experiments on mice that were unable to synthesise vitamin C themselves an ascorbate supplemented diet or a no-vitamin C diet.

After being on diets for four weeks , mice received by injection B16FO melanoma or 4T1 breast cancer cells and they continued using their diets for another two weeks, reported foodconsumer.org.

Researchers found that the mice supplemented with vitamin C and injected with B16FO melanoma cells showed a reduction in tumour metastasis by 71%, as against those on the control diet without vitamin C.

Mice, which received the vitamin C supplement, those receiving 4T1 breast cancer cells had shown a reduction in tumour growth by 28%, compared to tumour growth in mice non-supplemented with vitamin C.

The study also observed that there was a 99% decrease in serum inflammatory cytokine interleukin (IL)-6 caused by vitamin C supplement in the mice receiving melanoma cells, and a 85% decline in mice that received breast cancer cells, as opposed to mice that did not receive any vitamin C.

Apart from this, in the melanoma cell study, vitamin C supplementation of mice resulted in a 98% decrease in serum VEGF, when compared to mice that were not given vitamin C.

According to the researchers, ascorbate supplementation impedes metastasis, tumour growth and inflammatory cytokine secretion as well as increased encapsulation of tumours drawn out by melanoma and breast cancer cell challenge in gulo KO mice (that can’t produce vitamin C themselves).