“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’. In the lab tests, the bacteria never developed resistance to Vitamin C — ‘almost like the dream drug’, Jacobs said.”
