intravenous vitamin c

Stefan Leichtle, MD is an Acute Care Surgeon and Associate Professor of Surgery at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond, VA. His clinical practice focuses on trauma surgery and surgical critical care. Dr. Leichtle received his medical education in Germany at the Technical University Munich, completed his General Surgery residency at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor, MI, and underwent fellowship training in Surgical Critical Care and Trauma Surgery at the Los Angeles County and University of Southern California Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA.

Dr. Leichtle’s academic interests are in the implementation of evidence-based guidelines in clinical practice, multi-disciplinary research in critical care including traumatic brain injury, and development of novel strategies for the resuscitation of hemorrhagic shock. He is the Program Director of the Surgical Critical Care Fellowship at VCU and Medical Director of the Trauma Intensive Care Unit.

Alpha Fowler III, MD helped define the cellular and molecular inflammatory events that evolve in the pulmonary microvascular and pulmonary alveolar space as humans develop acute lung injury. During his faculty years at Virginia Commonwealth University, his laboratory has been active modeling acute lung injury, carefully defining the molecular phenomena that produce injury while at the same time focusing on interventional therapies to attenuate acute lung injury following the onset of bacterial sepsis. His laboratory has expertise in understanding and modeling cellular and molecular mechanisms that produce acute lung injury. He continues to be involved in clinical critical care medicine as an attending physician where he cares for many patients with acute lung injury. He and his colleagues at academic medical centers recently completed an NIH-funded randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled phase II trial the examined the extent to which high dose intravenous vitamin C attenuates multiple organ failure and lung injury following onset of sepsis. 

In Part 3, Jeanne Drisko MD, an expert in the administration of intravenous vitamin C, will explore its use in cancer. Dr Drisko will talk about what to add to the bag of IVC  and what not to add when preparing to treat cancer patients. This includes glutathione and alpha lipoic acid additions on the day of administration of IVC and the use on alternate days. 

I am Jeanne Drisko, MD, a professor emeritus at the University of Kansas Medical Center. I have spent my academic career conducting translational research in intravenous vitamin C. Today we will clear up outdated misconceptions and old prejudices that have followed the use of intravenous vitamin C for cancer. When vitamin C is given in the vein it bypasses tight control of absorption at the gut and becomes a drug. While it may retain some of its vitamin-like properties, it now becomes a drug and a prooxidant. As with any drug, dosing and infusion rates are critical. The practice of intravenous vitamin C will be more understandable for practitioners and patients alike. 

Your host, Jeanne Drisko, MD, will take you on a journey to understand how intravenous vitamin C came into use. Dr Drisko is a translational researcher exploring the efficacy and mechanisms of actions of IV C used in patients with disorders like cancer and infection. The history will explore the discover by Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, early research by Claus W Jungeblut, use in the 1940s by Frederick Klenner for infections like poliomyelitis, and moving up to modern times with orthomolecular theories by Linus Pauling. The history has not been straight forward and not without controversy. This will kick off a multi-program tour of IV vitamin C.