IV Vitamin C therapy for pets with cancer

The History of Vitamin C Therapy

Dr. Linus Pauling put Vitamin C supplementation in the limelight in 1971 with the release of his book, Vitamin C and the Common Cold. Dr. Linus Pauling’s dissertation on the benefits of Vitamin C for everything from the common cold to cancer was met with incredible resistance by the medical community at the time. Interestingly, current re-evaluations of Dr. Linus Pauling’s work showed that he was right!

Vitamin C has been used by non-mainstream, Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) Doctors for more than 60 years to treat conditions such as infections, autoimmune diseases, and cancer. Vitamin C therapy is remarkably safe and now has scientific research to support its use.

What Can Vitamin C Treat?

In people, vitamin C has been shown to help prevent cardiovascular diseases (atherosclerosis, coronary heart disease, hypertension, stroke), cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, cataracts, and gout. Vitamin C can be used to help treat sepsis (overwhelming infection), cancer, the common cold, and complications from cardiovascular surgery. Vitamin C has also been shown to reduce the severity of disease and increase survival in critically ill human patients.

What is Vitamin C used for in Pets?

In veterinary medicine, IV vitamin C is primarily used as a treatment for dogs with cancer. It is also used as part of the treatment for pets with snakebites, tick paralysis, and infections.

In dogs, high dose IV Vitamin C therapy has been scientifically proven to be safe and effective in inducing canine osteosarcoma cell death. In 2017, Dr. Kendra Pope, DVM, DACVIM (Oncology) published a study on the safety and dosing of IV Vitamin C in pets with various cancers including Lymphosarcoma, Transitional Cell Carcinoma, Nasal adenocarcinoma, and Melanoma.

How is Vitamin C administered?

To be effective therapeutically, Vitamin C is given in very high doses intravenously (IV). This is the only way to achieve blood levels of Vitamin C high enough to take on serious illnesses like cancer and sepsis. Pets are hospitalized, an IV catheter is placed in their leg, and the Vitamin C is administered slowly over several hours. Treatments are repeated weekly or more frequently, depending on the condition being treated.

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References:

Padayatty SJ, Sun AY, Chen Q, Espey MG, Drisko J, Levine M (2010) Vitamin C: Intravenous Use by Complementary and Alternative Medicine Practitioners and Adverse Effects. PLoS ONE 5(7): e11414. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0011414

Padayatty SJ, Riordan HD, Hewitt SM, Katz A, Hoffer LJ, Levine M. Intravenously administered vitamin C as cancer therapy: three cases. CMAJ. 2006 Mar 28;174(7):937-42. doi: 10.1503/cmaj.050346. PMID: 16567755; PMCID: PMC1405876.

Vitamin C | Linus Pauling Institute | Oregon State University

Musser ML, Mahaffey AL, Fath MA, Buettner GR, Wagner BA, Schneider BK, Seo YJ, Mochel JP, Johannes CM. In vitro Cytotoxicity and Pharmacokinetic Evaluation of Pharmacological Ascorbate in Dogs. Front Vet Sci. 2019 Nov 7;6:385. doi: 10.3389/fvets.2019.00385. PMID: 31788483; PMCID: PMC6854015.

Gordon, Daniel S., et al. "Vitamin C in health and disease: a companion animal focus." Topics in companion animal medicine 39 (2020): 100432.

Promoting Vitamin C | Linus Pauling - Profiles in Science (nih.gov)

Hemilä H. Vitamin C and Infections. Nutrients. 2017; 9(4):339. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu9040339

Fujii, Tomoko; Lankadeva, Yugeesh R.; Bellomo, Rinaldo; Current Opinion in Critical Care, Volume 28, Number 4, August 2022, pp. 374-380(7) Wolters Kluwer: https://doi.org/10.1097/MCC.0000000000000951