Many patients seen at The Center are diagnosed with nutrition problems. After the appropriate laboratory tests, any nutrition problem such as a deficiency or imbalance, are treated with diet and oral or intravenous supplementation. Some of the treatment protocols include high dose vitamin C. This can be administered via the oral and/or intravenous route. In reviewing the literature, several authors had shown that high levels of plasma ascorbic acid (mean=2.36 ± 0.42 mg/dL) significantly increased isoleucine, leucine, aspartic acid, and taurine, while significantly decreasing arginine, glutamic acid glycine and serine when compared to controls (mean=0.087 ± 0.254 mg/dL).1

Since the numbers reported in this study were small, 22 for the controls and 10 for the test group, we reviewed plasma ascorbic acid and amino acid data from 112 patients (36 males, 76 females) who were enrolled in a one year project at The Center. Ages ranged from 9 years to 52 years.