Jeanne Drisko, MD

Director, KU Integrative Medicine
Riordan Endowed Professor of Orthomolecular Medicine,
University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, KS

image of Dr. Jeanne Drisko

Abstract: 

Background: Ascorbate (vitamin C) has long been used as an unorthodox therapy for cancer, even though the underlying scientific mechanisms are not well understood.

Clinical Trial: A pilot phase 1/2a clinical trial was conducted in patients with newly diagnosed stage III or IV ovarian cancer. High-dose intravenous ascorbate (AA) was added to conventional paclitaxel/carboplatin (Pax + Cp) therapy, and toxicity was assessed. Twenty-seven participants were randomized into either the standard Cp + Pax arm or the Cp + Pax + AA arm. Cp + Pax chemotherapy was administered for the initial 6months, and AA treatment for 12 months. Any and all unwanted events were counted and graded for severity according to NCI CTCAEv3. Records for adverse events include patient interviews, emergency room visits, patients’ oncologist visits, and hospitalization records. The number of adverse events in each grade for each participant was divided by the number of encounters of that participant, and then the adverse events per encounter were averaged in the Cp + Pax arm and the Cp + Pax + AA arm, respectively. Participants were followed for survival for 5 years.

Statistical Analysis: Two-tailed Student’s t-test was performed for toxicity comparison between chemotherapy group and chemotherapy + ascorbate group. Welch’s t-test was used when the variances in the two compared populations were unequal. A log-rank test was performed for comparison of the survival curves between the chemotherapy group and the chemotherapy + ascorbate group.

Results: Ascorbate worked synergistically in vitro and in vivo with the first-line chemotherapeutic drugs carboplatin and paclitaxel. In patients with advanced ovarian cancer, treatment with ascorbate reduced toxicities associated with chemotherapy. Because the study was not powered for detection of efficacy, statistical improvement in survival was not observed.

Conclusion: Given the advantage of low toxicity of ascorbate, larger clinical trials need to be done to definitively examine the benefit of adding ascorbate to conventional chemotherapy.