Vitamin C Linked to Fewer Deaths in Blood Disorder Trial — SkimNews
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- EVITA trial researchers randomized 109 participants in Denmark and the United States with precancerous blood disorders or low-risk blood cancers to 1,000 mg/day oral vitamin C (55 patients) or placebo (54 patients) for 12 months.
- The primary endpoint — whether vitamin C slowed abnormal cell growth — showed no difference between the vitamin C and placebo groups.
- Vitamin C recipients showed favorable changes in inflammatory signaling and experienced fewer cases of anemia, pneumonia, acute aseptic arthritis, and internal bleeding, though gastrointestinal problems were more common in that group.
- At a median 33.6-month follow-up, 24 deaths occurred in the placebo group versus 11 in the vitamin C group — an exploratory survival signal that researchers say requires confirmation in a larger phase 3 trial.
- The trial was led by the Van Andel Institute–Stand Up To Cancer Epigenetics Dream Team, with co-senior authors Peter A. Jones of Van Andel Institute and Kirsten Grønbæk of Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen University Hospital.
- The scientific rationale: vitamin C boosts activity of TET enzymes that regulate gene switching — a pathway commonly reduced in some blood cancers — prompting the investigation into supplementation.
Why it matters: For patients with clonal cytopenia of undetermined significance or lower-risk myeloid malignancies — conditions with few preventive options — a cheap, oral supplement generating a survival signal in a randomized trial is a notable direction even if the primary endpoint failed. The 11-versus-24 death gap in 109 patients is too small to guide clinical decisions, but large enough that Van Andel and Copenhagen researchers are now pushing for a phase 3 confirmation study.
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