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BACTERIAL INFECTIONS

Ascorbic acid should be used with the appropriate antibiotic. The effect of ascorbic acid is synergistic with antibiotics and would appear to broaden the spectrum of antibiotics considerably. I found that penicillin-K orally or penicillin-G intramuscularly used in conjunction with bowel tolerance doses of ascorbic acid would usually treat infections caused by organisms ordinarily requiring ampicillin or other more modern synthetic penicillins. Cephalosporins were used in conjunction with ascorbic acid for staphylococcus infections. The combination of tetracycline and ascorbate was used for nonspecific urethritis; however, patients who had previously repeated recurrences of nonspecific urethritis found they were free of the disease with maintenance doses of ascorbate. I am not sure that the tetracycline was necessary even in the acute cases, but it was used for legal reasons. Some other cases of unknown etiology such as two cases of Reiter's disease and one case of acute anterior uveitis also responded dramatically to ascorbate.

A most important point is that patients with bacterial infections would usually respond rapidly to ascorbic acid plus a basic antibiotic determined by initial clinical impressions. If cultures subsequently proved the selection of antibiotic incorrect, usually the patient was well by that time.

In the case of a 45-year-old man who had developed osteomyelitis of the 5th metacarpal of the right hand following a cat bite, a partial amputation of the hand had been recommended and surgery scheduled. Consultants agreed. The patient delayed surgery and signed himself out of the hospital. He was given intravenous ascorbate 50 grams a day for 2 weeks. The infection resolved rapidly. While this patient had destruction of the distal end of the metacarpal, there has been no recurrence of the infection (25).

This case illustrates the frequent problem of an indolent infection with an organism non-responsive to the most sophisticated antibiotic treatment which then may respond rapidly to treatment with intravenous ascorbate.

Treating simultaneously with the appropriate antibiotic plus ascorbate has the additional advantage that if, unexpectedly, the infection is actually viral, the infection will be suppressed and the incidence of allergic reaction to the antibiotic reduced.

VITAMIN C AND ALLERGY

Patients seemed not to develop their first allergic reaction to penicillin when they had taken bowel tolerance ascorbate for several doses. Among the several thousand patients given penicillin, two cases of brief rash were seen in patients who had taken their first dose of penicillin along with their first dose of ascorbate. If one understands the reasons for bowel tolerance doses of ascorbate, it is obvious that these patients were not as yet "saturated." I saw three patients who had taken penicillin without ascorbate who had developed an urticarial rash. These cases rapidly responded to oral ascorbic acid. Only a single dose of antihistamine was usually used. I would have anticipated longer reactions in most of these cases. I saw one case of a delayed serum sickness type of penicillin reaction in a ten-year-old girl who had not taken ascorbate previously. The rash in this patient did not immediately respond to ascorbic acid. The rash took about two weeks to completely resolve; however, if the ascorbate was not taken regularly to tolerance, the rash would worsen. It was difficult to maintain high doses in this patient.

Patients who had known-previous-allergic reactions to penicillin were never given the antibiotic anticipating that vitamin C would protect them. I suspect that the deficit of body ascorbate produced by disease may have something to do with malfunction of the immune system and the development of allergies. However, whether ascorbate may give some protection from an antibiotic known previously to cause an allergic reaction in a patient, when subsequent reactions might involve anaphylaxis, is a question which must be approached very carefully. Certainly, inadequate doses of ascorbate could be disastrous.

Patients with mononucleosis, untreated with ascorbate, have a very high incidence of allergic reaction to penicillin. It is interesting that this same disease seems to cause some of the highest bowel tolerances of any disease.

As can be seen from the previous discussion of the increasing bowel tolerance phenomenon, there is undoubtedly increased utilization of ascorbate under stressful conditions. If this increased utilization creates a deficit, there may be malfunctions of various systems of the body such as the immune system which are dependent on ascorbate. Therefore, it should not be surprising that certain malfunctions of the immune system and adrenal glands associated with stress might be ameliorated by ascorbate.

Hay fever is controlled in the majority of patients. Bowel tolerance doses are usually required only at the peak of the season; otherwise, more modest doses suffice. Many patients find the effect of ascorbate more satisfactory than immunizations or antihistamines and decongestants. The dosages required are frequently proportional to exposure to the antigen.

Asthma is most often relieved by bowel tolerance doses of ascorbate. A child regularly having asthmatic attacks following exercise is usually relieved of these attacks by large doses of ascorbate. So far all of my patients having asthmatic attacks associated with the onset of viral diseases have been ameliorated by this treatment.

Large clinical studies will be necessary to prove this point, but for now prudent practice would be to take large doses of ascorbate when stressed or when ill.

This theory begins to make some sense of the observation that many patients will develop allergic disorders or other diseases following combinations of stress, disease, and malnutrition. Immunologists should be particularly interested in the control of these allergic problems and particularly the dramatic responses of cases of ankylosing spondylitis, Reiter's disease, and acute anterior uveitis. All three of these problems have a high association with the HLA-B27 antigen. The possibility that ascorbate might have some value in controlling the immune response at the gene level should be thoroughly investigated because there could be some basic implications in histocompatibility (graft acceptance), cancer control, and destruction of foreign invaders. Ascorbate would appear to help stabilize some homeostatic mechanisms.

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