IV Vitamin C

Hi preacherman,
It looks like your dad hasn't had docetaxil. Is that an option? Sorry I can't answer your question about vitamin C, but I have heard of a therapy using a vitamin e derivative.

PreacherMan,

Dunno if you have seen this -- National Cancer Institute: High-Dose Vitamin C (PDQ®) -- Patient Version -- but it seems to be a nice summary of the research on High-Dose Vitamin C.

My reading is that High-Dose IV C seems fairly safe and well tolerated and might be a useful complementary treatment (an addition to more conventional treatment) but that one may need to be careful about an interaction with some chemotherapy drugs. (High-Dose C interferes with the drug bortezomib but I don't think that is used for prostate cancer.)

If you want to dig through the research yourself (much of it is difficult reading) here is a link to a search result: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=vitamin+c+prostate+cancer. Most of the studies on the list are either test-tube studies or mouse studies but there are a few human studies included. Here is one that caught my eye: Effect of high-dose intravenous vitamin C on inflammation in cancer patients. It seems to show high-dose C doing mildly-helpful things for patients with advanced disease (a number of different cancers including prostate cancer).

I don't really know of anyone, but in your Dad's circumstances I would probably be seeking it out unless your docs are telling you that it would interfere with some other form of treatment.

I have some posts or threads I started a while back, with links to studies on something I decided to try while I waited for my surgery. It is a combination of oral Vit C: Vit K3 in a 100:1 ratio, which is thought/claimed to equal IV efficacy. Most of the studies were lab or animal, but they led to 2 small human trials. The reason for the human trials is because some are trying to get it FDA approved as a patent drug called Apatone. I thought- remember though just small studies on end stage men when all other treatments had failed- the studies were pretty impressive so i decided to try a mixture of the two vitamins available commercially. I slowly worked the Vitamin C portion up to about 7 or 8 gms a day. In the 2 months prior to surgery, my PSA dropped from 10.9 to 8.1. Unless I took a big dose on an empty stomach, I had np apparent side effects. Taking a big dose without food would give me slight stomach cramps at least until I ate.

So, was that a fluke, coincidence or placebo? Maybe. Likely? Certainly both of my doctors seemed totally unimpressed when I told them. (they had previously told me that nothing was shown to help, but take what I wanted it probably would not hurt). I believe both said essentially, with a shrug of the shoulders: "It(PSA) varies".

So who knows, might well be worthless. Regardless, since this was the only time in my life that my PSA did not go up and in fact went down(like it did in the studies)- in fact it had just previously went up in 3 weeks while I was on antibiotics to make sure it was not prostatitis causing the rapid rise- I felt this was a positive sign. I will continue taking it once or twice a year until I see evidence it might be harmful. Or until it becomes unavailable, which it will most likely if Apatone is ever approved by the FDA.

So, IV Vitamin C might conceivably help something, and probably won't hurt if it does not interfere with another drug or treatment you are on.

Human trial 1:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2288789/

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2288789/figure/F1/

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2288789/table/T2/

Human trial 2:
www.euro-med.us/dr-lasalvia-publications.pdf (scroll down to page 19, pages shown in upper right corner of each page, looking for "Serum Markers Variation Consistent with Autoschizis Induced
by Ascorbic Acid–Menadione in Patients with Prostate Cancer" Sorry, some of the charts may show up sideways, you may have to turn your computer on it's side to view the PSA and homocysteine decreases in the 2nd study.

There is a really good graph on pg 22 which will not show up when I open it in Chrome, but shows up well in Firefox.

Do not take any recommendation of mine at face value, in fact don't consider it a recommendation, get it OKed with your docs first if you decide to look into it further, whether IV or oral dose. For all I know- even though I have used it- these guys are just trying to sell more vitamin C.

Good luck!