You have probably taken vitamin C to shake off a cold. Most of us think of it as that basic, inexpensive vitamin, nothing more. A new trial has given researchers a reason to look at it again, in a far more serious setting.
The EVITA trial was published in the American Cancer Society journal Cancer. Over nearly three years of follow-up, 11 of the 55 people on 1,000 mg of vitamin C a day died.
In the placebo group, 24 of 54 died. That works out to a 65 percent lower risk of death among the people taking vitamin C.
EVITA was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 2 trial of 109 adults. The design is the gold standard in medicine, with neither patients nor doctors told who got the vitamin and who got the dummy pill.
Also read: Half a million heart deaths a year come down to one number most people never check
Everyone in the trial had either clonal cytopenia of undetermined significance or myelodysplastic syndrome.
These are blood disorders that sit between normal and cancer. They can slowly progress into acute myeloid leukemia, an aggressive blood cancer.
The survival result is an exploratory finding, not the trial's main goal. The team had set out to test whether vitamin C would slow the growth of abnormal blood cells. On that measure, it did not.
Why a plain vitamin may matter in a blood cancer
Vitamin C is a cofactor for TET2, an enzyme that keeps blood cell development on track by switching certain genes on and off. TET2 often sits broken or weakened in people with these pre-leukemia disorders.
Also read: FDA clears a drug that lets some rectal cancer patients skip surgery entirely
The idea behind the trial was that boosting vitamin C levels could help TET2 do its job. More than half of the participants came in with low vitamin C levels at the start.
People on vitamin C also had fewer serious side effects than those on placebo. The split was 33 percent versus 57 percent.
What has to happen before any of this changes care
The team wants a larger phase 3 trial to confirm the survival signal. According to the Van Andel Institute in Michigan, the study was a collaboration between its scientists and researchers at the University of Copenhagen.
Peter A. Jones, a distinguished professor at Van Andel and a co-corresponding author on the study, said the result went well beyond what the team had hoped for.
Also read: One reading during your sleep study could flag your heart failure risk a decade early
"I don't think ever in our wildest dreams we expected such a strong signal in terms of overall survival," Jones told Healio.
Anyone with a diagnosed blood disorder should talk to their hematologist before starting a high-dose supplement. Vitamin C can affect how some cancer treatments and medications work in the body.
Also read: Being lonely could cost you nearly 6 years free from depression and anxiety
This article is made and published by Mie Hermansen, who may have used AI in the preparation.