Scientists’ accidental find reveals Vitamin C kills tuberculosis bacteria

[JackLuis]

Scientists said Tuesday they had managed to kill lab-grown tuberculosis (TB) bacteria with good old Vitamin C — an “unexpected” discovery they hope will lead to better, cheaper drugs.

A team from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York made the accidental find while researching how TB bacteria become resistant to the TB drug isoniazid.

The researchers added isoniazid and a “reducing agent” known as cysteine to the TB in a test tube, expecting the bacteria to develop drug resistance.

Instead, the team “ended up killing off the culture”, according to the study’s senior author William Jacobs, who said the result was “totally unexpected”.

Reducing agents chemically reduce other substances.

The team then replaced the cysteine in the experiment with another reducing agent — Vitamin C.

It, too, killed the bacteria.

“I was in disbelief,” said Jacobs of the outcome published in the journal Nature Communications.

“Even more surprisingly… when we left out the TB drug isoniazid and just had Vitamin C alone, we discovered that Vitamin C kills tuberculosis.”

Now if Jack Daniels would kill herpes.....?

Don't you love that picture?

 

[oggbashan]

Now if Jack Daniels would kill herpes.....?

It doesn't, but a fine single malt Scotch is worth trying. If one doesn't work, there are hundreds of others to experiment with.

 

[Handley_Page]

It doesn't, but a fine single malt Scotch is worth trying. If one doesn't work, there are hundreds of others to experiment with.

Quite right, Ogg.
Then there are several species of Slivovitz and so on to test.

 

[oggbashan]

Quite right, Ogg.
Then there are several species of Slivovitz and so on to test.

And if they don't kill herpes, they might kill something else.

You'll never know till you've tried...