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Scientists Find Vitamin C Kills Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis

Posted by Soulskill on from the if-only-we-could-get-vitamin-C-into-common-foods dept.

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."

9 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. Vitamin C... by sconeu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Vitamin C... by D1G1T · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Seeing as how most TB is in places where FDA has no jurisdiction, I don't think that will be a problem.

    2. Re:Vitamin C... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well, to be fair, most organisms in a test tube can be killed by putting in a lot of acid (vitamin C being ascorbic acid). The key thing is that you can't significantly change the pH of the blood / body without causing problems in the host. It is easy to kill shit in a test tube.

    3. Re:Vitamin C... by Bowling+Moses · · Score: 5, Interesting

      "Really, this will likely be quickly quashed by the Pharmas. Or they will patent a delivery transport - with the only FDA-approved administration protocol."

      Those actions are pretty much diametrically opposed. Option one, quash something that's already known presumably by managing to get a hold of the IP (good luck) and then sitting on it for years using a minimum of effort and cost. Option two, take something that works only on tuberculosis culture, do the R&D to make it work in humans, get it through clinical trials, then manufacture it and try to make a profit. Tuberculosis is a grand master at hide and go seek. It lives inside of human cells part of the time so delivering the vitamin C/vitamin C derivative is non-trivial. Even for a pathogen hanging out nekkid in the bloodstream the delivery of the drug to its target is non-trivial, 10 years and $1 billion of R&D is the rule of thumb to get to FDA approval from early stage research.

    4. Re:Vitamin C... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well, to be fair, most organisms in a test tube can be killed by putting in a lot of acid (vitamin C being ascorbic acid)

      Actually, just vitamin C is Ascorbate.

      Ascorbate by itself is relatively unstable. Adding a hydrogen atom stabilizes it and makes it Ascorbic Acid which is probably the most common form of vitamin C.

      But you can add other atoms to it like Calcium, Sodium or Magnesium, which would make non-acidic, but still bioactive, forms of vitamin C.

  2. "More research needed." by spamchang · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. Seriously? This was on House years and years ago by enigmatic · · Score: 4, Informative

    So.. Did someone just catch up on the later seasons?

  4. Fire also kills drug resistant tuberculosis..... by EvilSS · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ....in a test tube.

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    I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
  5. Why is M.tb. a problem and other clarifications by jw3 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.