Answer to Pharmacology MCQ 429

1. Linus Pauling recommended taking about 10g/day for the common cold (although it probably cut down the course from 7 days to 6.5 days. “Is that significant? Who knows. If it works for some people, great”.
2. 10g/day though is a lot. You can get nausea and diarrhea with that amount of vitamin C.
3. You can also get stones in the bladder.
4. Vitamin C will also acidify urine and cause a sickle cell crisis
5. Patients with glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency tend to show hemolysis with large dose of vitamin c. How does this happen?
1. G6PD is needed to produce NADPH. NADPH then will reduce glutathione from GS-SG state to GSH, GSH. This reduced state of glutathione is necessary for the membrane integrity of RBC.
6. Massive doses of vitamin C will induce a large amount of enzyme to chew up the vitamin. Then, if you go cold turkey and stop the vitamin C intake, now all of a sudden, you have this large quantity of enzymes that will chew up every last molecule of vitamin C, thus inducing scurvy.

Category: Pharmacology MCQs