Bladder Cancer

 

Situation in Canada

According to The 2019 Canadian Cancer Society,  11800 Canadians will be diagnosed with bladder cancer this year. Moreover, 2500 Canadians will die of this disease. 9100 Men will be diagnosed with this disease as compared to 2700 Women. https://www.cancer.ca/en/cancer-information/cancer-type/bladder/statistics/?region=on 

Possible causes

There are many reasons for bladder cancer, Tobacco Smoking tops the list of reasons especially smoking for long periods. According to the American Cancer Society, smokers are 3 times as likely to get bladder cancer as non-smokers. https://www.cancer.org/cancer/bladder-cancer/causes-risks-prevention/risk-factors.html   Other causes of bladder cancer are exposure to chemical pollutants such as benzidine and beta-naphthylamine, which are sometimes used in the dye industry.

Treatment options

The main treatment for bladder cancer is surgery which can be either partial or total cystectomy for muscle-invasive bladder cancer. For superficial (Non-invasive) bladder cancer an intravesical (means inside the urinary bladder) injection of BCG vaccine or chemotherapy (usually Adriamycin) can be the initial treatment. The use of systemic chemotherapy for advanced or metastatic bladder cancer was predominant for many decades, however, because of the high toxicity profile of the chemotherapies used in bladder cancer (especially Cisplatin and Cyclophosphamide or Ifosfamide ),  and the limited response rate, the medical oncologists are shifting now to less toxic treatments and a similar (or even sometimes better) response rates than chemotherapies. These new interventions are called immune therapies, and their action depends on inhibiting the  immune checkpoints (mostly programmed cell death 1 (PD-1) and programmed cell death 1 ligand 1 (PD-L1) that make the cancer cells very accessible to the bodily immune cells Other immune therapies depend on enchanting the  regulatory T cells, myeloid-derived suppressor cells, tumor-associated macrophages and type 2 innate and adaptive lymphocytes

Role of High Dose Vitamin C

Although not studied in wide-scale research, the use of high doses of Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid ) can be supportive in cancer treatment including bladder cancer. Such effects stem from the high oxidative damage the high dose of vitamin C does to cancer cells by producing big amounts of an oxidative agent (H2O2) around cancer cells which interferes with cancer cell division and progression. Moreover, high-dose vitamin C has an anti-angiogenic effect which means that it reduces the blood flow to the cancer cells and deprives the cancer cells of enough oxygen and nutrition. Last, but not least, High Dose Intravenous Vitamin C can activate the process of Apoptosis (or Programmed Cell Death) of the Cancer Cells which makes cancer cells less-divid or hampers their abilities to divide eternally. These effects have been proven by many research groups, the latest one was published in 2018 by Vissers M, and Das A https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6037948/ 

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