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Vitamin C

Published on June 30, 2026   8 min

A selection of talks on Cardiovascular & Metabolic

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Hello. My name's Susan Fairweather-Tait. I'm professor of human nutrition in the Norwich Medical School at the University of East Anglia in the UK and I'm going to be talking to you about Vitamin C.
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Vtamin C exists in two interchangeable forms in the body. It's first of all the oxidized form of Vitamin C which is dehydroascorbic acid and then the reduced form of Vitamin C ascorbic acid. The antioxidant functions related to Vitamin C are to do with its ability to donate electrons. It's able to scavenge free radicals. That's a very important role of Vitamin C. It also has many other roles. For example, it's a cofactor for non iron monooxygenases. It's involved in dopamine synthesis from noradrenaline and involved in hormone synthesis. It's also involved in iron absorption. Although it's not a essential, but it does reduce ferric iron in the gut to ferrocene, which is the form that iron must be in to be absorbed into the small intestine. Other roles it has is a cofactor of iron and Alpha keto acid dependent oxygenases. Therefore it's involved in collagen synthesis and assembly and carnitine synthesis. Involves in regulation of gene expression and epigenetic erasers. The demethylation of DNA and RNA nucleobases. The demethylation of histones, the hydroxylation of ribosomes and the hydroxylation of hypoxia inducible factor one transcription factor. Finally it's involved in a amino acid metabolism. In the demethylation of arginine and lysine and in tyrozine breakdown. There's wide range of functions.

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