I’ll preface what comes next by saying the findings are in mice so the next rodent group they’ll have to test is lawyers then after them humans.

Vitamin C relies on two chemicals to transport it around. One of these transporters takes vitamin C from the intestine into the blood stream and the second transports it from the blood into various organs including the brain.

A group of researchers removed the gene for the second transporter – the one for the organs – from and observed what happened.

These transporter-challenged mice died almost immediately after birth because of haemorrhage into the brain and failure to breathe properly. Coincidentally – or perhaps not at all coincidentally – these are the major complications of prematurity in human babies.

What this study has shown is that vitamin C has far more profound influences on human development than people have assumed and maybe it has a role in the care of pre term babies.

Some people have tried vitamin C supplements in premmies without much benefit. The reason may be that the babies need more of this transporter to get the vitamin into the brain more effectively.

To test that they’ll need experimental animals which survive into adulthood.

Hedgier MA. (commentary) Nature Medicine 2002;8:445-446