23 May 2013

Drug resistant TB killed by vitamin C

9:54 am on 23 May 2013

American scientists say they have unexpectedly managed to kill lab-grown tuberculosis bacteria with vitamin C.

A team from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York made the find by accident while researching how TB bacteria become resistant to a drug used to treat the illness.

The outcome has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

In the laboratory studies, vitamin C appeared to be acting as a "reducing agent" - something that triggers the production of of reactive oxygen species called free radicals.

These free radicals killed off the TB, even drug resistant forms that are untreatable with conventional antibiotics such as isoniazid.

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.