Supplemental ascorbate in the supportive treatment of cancer: Reevaluation of prolongation of survival times in terminal human cancer
Abstract
A study has been made of the survival times of 100 terminal cancer patients who were given supplemental ascorbate, usually 10 g/day, as part of their routine management and 1000 matched controls, similar patients who had received the same treatment except for the ascorbate. The two sets of patients were in part the same as those used in our earlier study [Cameron, E. & Pauling, L. (1976) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 73, 3685-3689]. Tests confirm that the ascorbate-treated patients and the matched controls are representative subpopulations of the same population of “untreatable” patients. Survival times were measured not only from the date of “untreatability” but also from the precisely known date of first hospital attendance for the cancer that eventually reached the terminal stage. The ascorbate-treated patients were found to have a mean survival time about 300 days greater than that of the controls. Survival times greater than 1 yr after the date of untreatability were observed for 22% of the ascorbate-treated patients and for 0.4% of the controls. The mean survival time of these 22 ascorbate-treated patients is 2.4 yr after reaching the apparently terminal stage; 8 of the ascorbate-treated patients are still alive, with a mean survival time after untreatability of 3.5 yr.
Continue Reading
Information & Authors
Information
Published in
Classifications
Submission history
Published online: September 1, 1978
Published in issue: September 1978
Keyword
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citation statements
Altmetrics
Citations
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.
Cited by
Loading...
View Options
View options
PDF format
Download this article as a PDF file
DOWNLOAD PDFGet Access
Login options
Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.
Personal login Institutional LoginRecommend to a librarian
Recommend PNAS to a LibrarianPurchase options
Purchase this article to get full access to it.