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Scientists Find Vitamin C Kills Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis
AndyKrish writes "A BBC story reports that scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University found Vitamin C kills drug resistant tuberculosis (abstract). Though results are preliminary — the lead investigator of the study said, 'We have only been able to demonstrate this in a test tube, and we don't know if it will work in humans and in animals' — this is an exciting development in the fight against drug-resistant TB."
Somewhere in heaven, Linus Pauling is laughing his head off...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
....Guess!
by oral ingestion, the death is mechanical, not chemical.
No context given in the article, but here's the abstract:
"Drugs that kill tuberculosis more quickly could shorten chemotherapy significantly. In Escherichia coli, a common mechanism of cell death by bactericidal antibiotics involves the generation of highly reactive hydroxyl radicals via the Fenton reaction. Here we show that vitamin C, a compound known to drive the Fenton reaction, sterilizes cultures of drug-susceptible and drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis. While M. tuberculosis is highly susceptible to killing by vitamin C, other Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens are not. The bactericidal activity of vitamin C against M. tuberculosis is dependent on high ferrous ion levels and reactive oxygen species production, and causes a pleiotropic effect affecting several biological processes. This study enlightens the possible benefits of adding vitamin C to an anti-tuberculosis regimen and suggests that the development of drugs that generate high oxidative burst could be of great use in tuberculosis treatment."
So you need ferrous ions as well. Interesting things to have in your lungs, but it's a start.
You mean so many humans don't have to.
There are probably tons of human safe substances that will kill tuberculosis in a test tube. I see zero chance of this working in vivo.
So.. Did someone just catch up on the later seasons?
Why are researchers wasting time with non patentable medicine? This is madness!
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
and bears shit in the woods. story at 10
Even if it works, in short order we'll have vitamin C resistant tuberculosis. Next up, miracle cure X, and cure X resistant tuberculosis. I'm all for miracle cures, but let's keep in mind that all viruses and parasites mutate to deal with our cures.
the death is mechanical, not chemical.
The only thing you could possibly mean is a pill so large that it blocks the airway. Otherwise, chemical.
Yes, if you use enough acid it will kill just about anything.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Proper nutrition prevents disease. Stop the presses.
We have only been able to demonstrate this in a test tube, and we don't know if it will work in humans and in animals ...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Vitamin C is ascorbic acid and is used as a preservative in foodstuff for a reason (with the added bonus of not counting as preservative and sounding healthy enough to even advertise it on the packaging).
Well, maybe this is too simple. But many of these test tube results prove to be pretty meaningless because getting up to the needed concentrations in a living patient would kill him faster than the actual illness.
Sigh, it is almost too easy to kill stuff in test tube, HIV can be killed with garlic. It is quite rare to get it to work in a living being. Unfortunately this article will bring out the anti-vaccers, germ theory deniers and other woowoo people out of the woodworks...
- Raynet --> .
Albert Einstein College of Medicine? I don't think medicine is what that guy is famous for.... That's almost like winning the Adolf Hitler humanitarian award.
Anyone else think that the name "Albert Einstein" should have been reserved for physics, not medicine?
....in a test tube.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
To quote Paracelsus "it's the dose that makes the poison"
That, or a pill encased in a jagged metal O.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Probably the same researchers who recently discovered that babies learn through mimicry...
(Can't remember if I saw that one on Slashdot or Yahoo)
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Wasn't that polio, not TB? I haven't watched House in years. And it was a hoax even in the episode.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Ah, you mean Krusty O's. My favourite breakfast cereal.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
"An estimated 650,000 people worldwide have multidrug-resistant TB..."
So, every one of those 650,000 people aren't drinking enough orange juice?
"We have only been able to demonstrate this in a test tube, and we don't know if it will work in humans and in animals."
Oh, ok. When they come up with a Vitamin C IV drip cocktail or an inhaler/vaporizer that when used it kills TB and actually cures someone, then that will be news. Until then, we can at least look on the bright side: You can't hurt yourself by taking too much Vitamin C nearly as easily as you can with others like Vitamin A, etc. Someone out there is gonna hear that "Vitamin C kills TB" on the interwebs and OD on it, sooner or later.
"a pill so large that it blocks the airway" like an orange.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Although it's little-known outside orthomolecular medicine circles (Linus Pauling and Albert Szent-Györgyi (the discoverer of the Vitamin C/Krebs cycle) were two prominent members of the orthomolecular medicine community), Dr. Fred Klenner successfully cured several many polio patients in the late '40s and early '50s, using megadoses of acsorbic acid (nominally the same as vitamin C). A good number of these were advanced enough that they should have died or at the very least been crippled for life by the disease.
Because Klenner was only a backwoods Southern doctor, his remarkable success was largely overlooked for many years. (He wrote his experiences up and had them published as an article titled ‘Virus Pneumonia and Its Treatment with Vitamin C’ in the Journal of Southern Medicine and Surgery . This was followed up by many other articles over the years, mostly on megavitamin therapy for a variety of diseases, including tuberculosis and multiple sclerosis.
Google for the details - you'll be amazed...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
LD50 for ascorbic acid in rats: 11900 mg/kg That's an insane amount and impossible to ingest for the vast majority of folk.
Three 2 gram doses before meals.
It's anecdotal, but I haven't been sick for more than 36 hours in 20 years (half my life, no cold or flu), but only taking C and other supplements for the past few years. Since having children I have gotten short sicknesses more often, but that's because they incubate the stuff and pass on heavy doses to me (in my opinion).
I also have to mention that I got sick a lot as a young kid (flu and other nasal related infections). That's probably the reason my immune system is what it is.
But the C can't hurt, except for some stomach problems at particularly high doses (greater than 10 grams if you aren't used to it).
BlameBillCosby.com
But that's not a very large dose of Vitamin C. But a whole bag of oranges might count - much harder to choke on whole, though.
Works great for killing tuberculosis in humans too.
Here's a solution. If you don't want to see the animals suffer, you do it. You and everyone who thinks like you can go ahead and die from TB so that other people can live without having to let the animals suffer. Isn't that worth the drug companies profiting from a cure? It's certainly far nobler than sitting back and ignorantly proclaiming the animals are the TB sufferers we need to worry about.
that brings out the worst gee whiz flying car never dull razor 200 mpg carburetor mentality in slashdot ?
Hydroxyl radicals are HIGHLY toxic to all living things
eg, here is ferrous ion and oxygen species killing nerve like cells
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11495352
and, uh,like a problem for the lungs where TB is
In groundwater and anaerobic surface waters, within the pH range of natural waters, iron is present in the reduced state, ferrous, Fe +2, in its soluble forms. When such waters are exposed to air so that oxygen can enter or an oxidizing agent such as chlorine is introduced, the ferrous iron is converted into the oxidized form of iron, ferric, Fe +3. These waters become turbid and highly unacceptable from the aesthetic point of view due to the oxidation of iron and the formation of colloidal precipitates.
and, uh, like free iron is in very , very low conc in normal tissues - as a matter of fact, bacteria which live in humans have to go to extra ordinary lengths to get iron, cause it is all sequesterd by the body (S aureous siderophore etc)
I think you've just found the next fad in the patent market....
Doing "X" "in a test tube" instead of "on a computer."
$something_obvious "in a test tube!"
From Wikipedia:
Yeshiva University President Dr. Samuel Belkin began planning for a new medical school as early as 1945. Six years later, Dr. Belkin and New York City Mayor Vincent Impellitteri entered into an agreement to begin construction. At the same time, world-renowned physicist and humanitarian Albert Einstein sent a letter to Dr. Belkin. He remarked that such an endeavor would be “unique” in that the school would “welcome students of all creeds and races.”[7] Two years later, on his 74th birthday, March 14, 1953, Albert Einstein agreed to attach his name to the medical school.
If I understand correctly, they use vitamin C as a catalyst on iron to create an intense oxydative stress. If that is the way used to destroy a pathogen, I believe it would also destroy patient's cells if used in vivo.
...where I see fit.
It does have some mild side effects in vivo though.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Mtb is an intracellular pathogen. It invades our cells, the very same cells that are supposed to kill bacteria (the macrophages). This is why treatment of TB takes six months. Vitamin C, at a dosage lethal for Mtb as described in the article, cannot be used to kill the bacteria in our cells. The importance of the article is that it identifies a potentially intereseting difference between Mtb and other bacteria.
As for vitamin C, this is not some kind of a miraculous drug; it is just a co-enzyme required for a few particular reactions in our metabolic pathways. We, humans, are mutants, we lack the ability to synthetise vitamin C -- along with our cousins, the monkeys, although most animals do synthetise it on their own. Lack of vitamin C impedes the metabolism. However, only little of the co-enzyme is needed, and once vitamin C is no longer a limiting factor, it has barely an effect.
Think about that in terms of a network. If your wireless router is extremely slow, buying a new one will increase the speed of your connection. But what good is a super fast wifi router, if the outgoing connection runs at 10Mbit?
Vitamin C is also an antioxidant, and this is why some people (quite incorrectly) think that taking large doses of vitamin C are beneficial. However, there are two forms of this compound, L-ascorbate (vitamin C) and D-ascorbate; both are antioxidative, but only one is a co-enzyme. D-ascorbate, however, shows no beneficial effects.
Big pharma has not much interest in preventing the use of vitamin C in Mtb treatment. Mtb drugs are cheap, generic, and effective; the main reason why Mtb is a problem for much of the world is lack of fast and cheap diagnostic tools. You see, 2 billions (2e9, one third of worlds population) are infected with Mtb, and of these, only 10% will develop tuberculosis during their lifetime. However, we don't know which, why, and when. Also, when a person falls ill, it is not a quick process like a flu; rather than that, a person starts feeling unwell, caughing and becomes infectious over weeks before she finally decides to see a doctor. Here is a review article I wrote on TB and biomarkers: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23181737 (full text behind a paywall, unfortunately).
Pauling believed that taking large doses of vitamines will prevent cancer and took large amounts of vitamin C throughout his life. In 1994, he died of prostate cancer.
What I really want to know is if taking vitamin C adversely affects BCG treatment for bladder cancer. http://www.webmd.com/cancer/bladder-cancer/bacillus-calmette-guerin-bcg-for-bladder-cancer
Hot, can sing, AND kill Drug-Resistant TB?
Is there anything she CAN'T do?
...cure polio?
To be clear, for the average adult male, we're talking about a 1kg ball of vitamin C-- hence the "mechanical death" part. I dont know that your body responds well to 1kg of anything taken orally.
Or the volume of it ruptures the stomach.