Vitamin C kills drug-resistant TB in lab tests

Vitamin C can kill multidrug-resistant TB in the lab, scientists have found.

The surprise discovery may point to a new way of tackling this increasingly hard-to-treat infection, the US study authors from Yeshiva University say in Nature Communications.
An estimated 650,000 people worldwide have multidrug-resistant TB.

Studies are now needed to see if a treatment that works using the same action as vitamin C would be useful as a TB drug in humans.

Lead investigator Dr William Jacobs, professor of microbiology and immunology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University, said: "We have only been able to demonstrate this in a test tube, and we don't know if it will work in humans and in animals.

"It also helps that we know vitamin C is inexpensive, widely available and very safe to use. At the very least, this work shows us a new mechanism that we can exploit to attack TB."

Good natural sources of the vitamin include oranges, blackcurrants and broccoli and most people get all they need from their diet.
Source: BBC Posted by Unknown 5/22/2013