Bill Sardi's Knowledge of Health: Researchers Move Closer To Restoring Human Body’s Ability To Make Vitamin C

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Special Report: Researchers Move Closer To Restoring Human Body's Ability To

Make Vitamin C

 

 

By Bill Sardi, Knowledge of Health, Inc. © 2008

 

Hamilton, Ontario CANADA (Sept. 11, 2008)- Utilizing gene therapy, researchers

at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario (Canada) report, for the first time,

that they have successfully restored the ability to make vitamin C in a genetic

strain of mice that no longer produces vitamin C as most animals do, suggesting

a future day when this lost capability can be restored to humans.

 

Utilizing a harmless virus as a vector (delivery agent), a working copy of the

gulonolactone oxidase gene was re-inserted into mouse liver cells and their

ability to naturally produce vitamin C was restored, enough to increase their

blood levels by 6-fold in just four days, and within 23 days blood

concentrations were 20-fold higher.  Gene therapy was so effective, vitamin C

levels in the genetically defective mice were similar to normal mice who

naturally produce vitamin C throughout the day.

 

Only a small number of animals, guinea pigs, fruit bats, primate monkeys and

humans, do not produce vitamin C naturally by enzymatic conversion of blood

sugar to ascorbate, the type of vitamin C that is continually produced in the

liver of most animals.  For example, a 160-pound goat, about the same weight as

a human, will synthesize about 13,000 milligrams of vitamin C per day.  

 

Modern humans, by comparison, produce no vitamin C and consume only about 110

milligrams of vitamin C from their daily diet.  Early hunter gatherers who

foraged for food are believed to have consumed around 640 mg of vitamin C per

day from fruits and vegetables.

 

Vitamin C deficiency is universal in humans and is caused by a single gene

defect.  This genetic defect is believed to have occurred long ago in human

history and was transferred to all succeeding generations.  The gene that makes

the enzyme gulonolactone oxidase, which is currently found in all humans, is

dysfunctional.  This finding gives rise to speculation that early humans once

produced their own vitamin C as most animals do today.

 

While humans can consume vitamin C supplements to boost vitamin C blood levels,

it is often difficult to achieve high concentrations needed to prevent or even

treat disease.  Researchers speculate that if the ability to continually

synthesize vitamin C in humans could be restored, humans would likely live far

longer, and experience fewer cataracts, gallstones, aneurysms (bulging blood

vessels), as well as less cancer, diabetes and heart disease.  

 

Animals that produce vitamin C naturally live on average about 8-12 times beyond

their age when childhood growth ceases.  For comparison, humans live only 2-3.5

times beyond their age of physical maturation (~ age 18 years) and live about

60-75 years.  This research suggests a day when humans might live hundreds of

disease-free years of life.

 

This report comes on the heels of recent studies showing intravenous vitamin C

therapy may be promising for treatment of cancer.  The mouse gene therapy study

was published in an advanced online edition of Human Gene Therapy, and the

complete paper can be viewed

here:http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/hgt.2008.106

 

Lead researcher Herb E. Schellhorn of the Department of Biology at McMaster

University, said the future of this type of research may depend upon the

acceptance of gene therapy altogether, since earlier gene therapy involving

humans have been disappointing.  But he reports researchers around the world

are eager to learn more about his work and fellow researchers at McMaster

University are vying to conduct further studies.  Schellhorn is currently

writing a grant proposal, seeking funding to proceed with follow-up studies. 

#### © 2008 Bill Sardi, Knowledge of Health, Inc.