C for Asthma

P:for Asthma

Hay-fever sufferers, most skeptical of patients, were last fortnight again offered a new hope. In Science Chemists Harry N. Holmes and Wyvona Alexander, of Oberlin College, recommended vitamin C (ascorbic acid) for relieving the complaint.

"The patient," said the chemists confidently, "(after consulting the family physician, as was done in our own recorded experiments) would do well to begin with a daily 250-mg. dose and, if no decided improvement results after one week, to try 500 mg. daily until satisfactory progress is observed. After that he might get along comfortably on 250 mg. or less during the season." The chemists believe the vitamin works as follows: During allergic attacks, such as hay fever, the vitamin-C level in the body goes down; at the same time, histamine in the blood goes up. Histamine is the villain of allergy, for it is an irritating substance normally present in small amounts in the body but formed in large quantities whenever tissues are dam aged -- e.g., in the red area around a burn.

Injected under the skin, it produces a hivelike raised wheal with reddened skin around it.

If air is bubbled through a test tube, histamine and vitamin C react with each other, releasing ammonia (the amine part of histamine) and eliminating the irritating chemical. As circulating blood contains dissolved oxygen, Dr. Holmes thought it likely that the same reaction goes on in the body, decided to see what huge quantities of vitamin C would do toward taking hay-fever sufferers' extra histamine out of circulation, in order to relieve wheezing and sneezing.

The treatment was tried by 25 patients. After a week on 100-mg. doses of vitamin C a day, eight out of 24 thought they felt a little better, one got a rash and quit. When the dose was upped to 200 mg. a day, one patient reported "no hay fever at all after years of suffering." Those who felt a little better before began feeling a lot better, and some who had not benefited from 100-mg. doses began to perk up.

Then began dosages of 500 mg. a day for eleven patients still sneezing in Oberlin's lushly pollenized air (count: 80 -- sneezing begins at 15). After a few days all except two felt fine. An asthma invalid became "astonishingly vigorous and healthy after one week." (But asthmatics sometimes improve on sugar pills -- sometimes their illness is largely mental.) In a burst of bravery, sufferer No. 25, who had previously taken no vitamin C at all, took a 1,000-mg. dose. Next day he experienced "great relief."

Dr. Holmes, president of the American Chemical Society and head of Oberlin's chemistry department, has long worked on vitamins and body chemistry, was first to isolate pure vitamin A in crystalline form (TIME, April 26, 1937). In an interview last fortnight he listed other recent uses for vitamin C: intravenous injection of one gram in solution for shock (another instance when blood histamine is high); in wound healing; for insomnia; in treating industrial workers exposed to toxic dusts. If people taking vitamin C by mouth are troubled by its acid reaction, he advises them to mix a little bicarbonate of soda with it.

Unlike many other drugs, there is no shortage of vitamin C. The U.S. will soon produce it at the rate of 100 tons a year.

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