ArticleOpen medicine (Warsaw, Poland)2021
No significant benefit of moderate-dose vitamin C on severe COVID-19 cases.
Article in Open medicine (Warsaw, Poland), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- Vitamin C Supplementation for the Treatment of COVID-19: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Nutrients · 2022Pooled it
- Vitamins C and D and COVID-19 Susceptibility, Severity and Progression: An Evidence Based Systematic Review.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2022Pooled it
- Clinical significance of micronutrient supplements in patients with coronavirus disease 2019: A comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis.Clinical nutrition ESPEN · 2022Pooled it
- Effect of Vitamin C on Clinical Outcomes of Critically Ill Patients With COVID-19: An Observational Study and Subsequent Meta-Analysis.Frontiers in medicine · 2022Pooled it
- Herbal and Dietary Supplements as Adjunctive Treatment for Mild SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Italy.Nutrients · 2025Review
- Association of Vitamin C Treatment with Clinical Outcomes for COVID-19 Patients: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- Role of high dose vitamin C in management of hospitalised COVID-19 patients: A minireview.World journal of virology · 2022Review
- The Variable Nature of Vitamin C-Does It Help When Dealing with Coronavirus?Antioxidants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- Oxidative Stress and Hyper-Inflammation as Major Drivers of Severe COVID-19 and Long COVID: Implications for the Benefit of High-Dose Intravenous Vitamin C.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
There is no specific drug for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We aimed to investigate the possible clinical efficacy of moderate-dose vitamin C infusion among inpatients with severe COVID-19. Data of 397 adult patients with severe COVID-19 admitted to a designated clinical center of Wuhan Union Hospital (China) between February 13 and February 29, 2020, were collected. Besides standard therapies, patients were treated with vitamin C (2-4 g/day) or not. The primary outcome was all-cause death. Secondary outcome was clinical improvement of 2 points on a 6-point ordinal scale. About 70 participants were treated with intravenous vitamin C, and 327 did not receive it. No significant association was found between vitamin C use and death on inverse probability treatment weighting (IPTW) analysis (weighted hazard ratio [HR], 2.69; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.91-7.89). Clinical improvement occurred in 74.3% (52/70) of patients in the vitamin C group and 95.1% (311/327) in the no vitamin C group. No significant difference was observed between the two groups on IPTW analysis (weighted HR, 0.76; 95% CI, 0.55-1.07). Our findings revealed that in patients with severe COVID-19, treatment with moderate dose of intravenous vitamin C had no significant benefit on reducing the risk of death and obtaining clinical improvement.
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