Vitamin C is key both to preventing inflammatory arthritis and to maintaining healthy joints with arthrosis. Previous short-term studies in humans and guinea pigs have shown that vitamin C could protect against knee osteoarthritis. On the contrary, this new study shows that long-term use of vitamin C supplements can exacerbate osteoarthritis. In conclusion, critical obstacles to the development of an effective treatment option remain due to a humanized animal model that is poorly translatable for testing, the dysregulation of the vitamin C transporter in osteoarthritic tissue and an incomplete understanding of the pathophysiology of human arthrosis.
While the multiple studies mentioned above have provided data that illustrate the chondroprotective capacity of vitamin C, several other studies published in the literature have reached the opposite conclusion. The average dose (30 milligrams) was the human equivalent of getting 200 milligrams of vitamin C by eating five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. In the plasma membrane, there is a specific transport system, sodium-dependent vitamin C transporters (SVCT) to mediate the entry process. But what about oranges? Citrus fruits are packed with vitamin C, an antioxidant that has been linked to improving the immune system, healing wounds and even preventing arthritis.
The most important inherent property of vitamin C is its ability to act as a strong antioxidant, with the ability to reduce and stabilize potentially harmful free radical compounds. However, the addition of 100 μM of vitamin C caused a significant decrease in inflammatory cytokines and MMPs, as well as a substantial reduction in chondrocyte apoptosis. It demonstrated that drastically high serum levels of vitamin C in guinea pigs caused an increase in the expression of the inflammatory marker, TGF-beta, in marginal osteophytes. Humans and guinea pigs are among the few animals that cannot synthesize vitamin C on their own.
Your doctor can check your vitamin D levels with a simple blood test, although the usefulness of testing for healthy people is questionable. The researchers concluded that joint injections of vitamin C show a clear benefit in delaying the progression of arthrosis by attenuating oxidative damage to articular cartilage; however, an excessive amount of these substances can eventually cause harmful effects. Researchers say that obesity is also a known risk factor for knee osteoarthritis caused by excessive stress on the knee joints. He described the multiple inflammatory pathways on which vitamin C transmits its effect in his two-part study.
