12 Intervention Trials Show Vitamin C Works for COVID-19

This safe, inexpensive, and essential vitamin has scientific credentials but remains unused or prohibited

It's an antioxidant, an anti-viral, and an anti-inflammatory with no reported adverse events in published clinical trials. So why not give it to COVID patients?Elnur/Shutterstock

Most people know that vitamin C supports the immune system. This finding is backed up by several studies and yet hospitals rarely use it to treat COVID-19.

Indeed, a review of 12 studies, including five “gold standard” randomized controlled trials, shows that this simple vitamin saves lives when given in the right dose. The review, which was published in the journal Life, was carried out and funded by VitaminC4Covid, a consortium of vitamin C experts including Dr. Marcela Vizcaychipi from the Faculty of Medicine at London’s Imperial College, Associate Professor Anitra Carr, who heads the Nutrition in Medicine group at the University of Otago, and Dr. Paul Marik, chief of the Division of Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine, Eastern Virginia Medical School.

The studies show that COVID-19 patients have depleted vitamin C levels, often to the level found in scurvy. In patients with serious pneumonia, a depleted vitamin C level greatly increases the risk of widespread internal organ damage and death. They need substantial doses of vitamin C to recover and survive.

Vizcaychipi, who heads research in intensive care medicine at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in the United Kingdom, has been giving COVID and non-COVID patients in its intensive care units up to 6 grams (6,000 mg) of vitamin C intravenously. The dosage is dependent on the severity of the disease and the amount needed to correct a deficiency, as indicated by vitamin C urine test sticks.

“Vitamin C is certainly one of multiple factors that contributes to better outcomes and speed of recovery. It should be standard practice. We have not had any safety issues at all,” Vizcaychipi says.

In the United States, a group of medical doctors, members of the Frontline COVID Critical Care Alliance (www.flccc.net) have more than halved mortality in their ICUs using the MATH+ protocol of steroids (methylprednisolone), vitamin C (ascorbic acid), vitamin B1 (thiamine), vitamin D, and anticoagulants (heparin). This protocol was pioneered by Drs. Paul Marik, Pierre Kory, and Joseph Varon, a critical care expert recognized by the United Nations for his life-saving work.

Currently, Marik, director of the intensive care unit at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, is being prohibited from using this safe and effective life-saving protocol by Sentara Health on the false grounds of a lack of evidence. He is suing them.

“This case is about doctors, having the ability to honor their Hippocratic Oath, to follow evidence-based medicine, and to treat our patients the best we know how. I refuse to watch another patient die from COVID-19 knowing that I was not allowed to give them proven treatments that could have saved their life.”

According to the review, the 12 clinical trials show that “intravenous vitamin C may improve oxygenation parameters, reduce inflammatory markers, decrease days in the hospital, and reduce mortality, particularly in the more severely ill patients.”

What is remarkable about vitamin C is that it’s an antioxidant, an anti-viral, and also anti-inflammatory. It’s an impressive three-in-one defender. Not one adverse event has been reported in any published vitamin C clinical trials in COVID-19 patients.

The review also shows that high doses of oral vitamin C taken upon infection may keep people out of the hospital because it increases their rate of recovery.

According to Carr, “Oral doses of 8 grams per day have been shown to increase the rate of recovery from symptomatic infection by 70 percent. For more critically ill patients, trials using doses of 6-24g a day intravenously have shown positive benefits in terms of increased survival, and reduced hospital stay, improved oxygenation, or reduced inflammation.”

It takes 20 oranges to provide a total of only one gram of vitamin C, so these doses require supplementation. The review includes several studies showing that “patients with severe respiratory infections have depleted vitamin C status, with the prevalence of deficiency increasing with the severity of the condition.”

In one study, vitamin C levels predicted who would or wouldn’t survive. Plasma levels of vitamin C were reported to be very low in 70 to 80 percent of COVID patients. What is clear is that several grams, not just a glass of orange juice, are needed to correct severe vitamin C deficiency.

For over a year, the VitaminC4Covid team has been calling on government advisors to carry out a proper review of the evidence for vitamin C, in order to inform the public and medical profession. Vitamin C is safe, inexpensive, available, and proven to work.

You are invited to refer to www.vitaminC4covid.com/recommendations for detailed guidance on what to take for prevention, for early treatment, if severe and hospitalized, and if in the intensive care unit.

The ORTHOMOLECULAR MEDICINE NEWS SERVICE is a wire-service-style news feed directed to members of the press, radio and TV news media. Republished from Greenmedinfo.com