In a move based on reports coming out of China, a pulmonologist in Long Island, New York, is treating intensive care patients with high-dose, intravenous vitamin C. “Each dose is more than 16 times the National Institutes of Health’s daily recommended dietary allowance of vitamin C, which is just 90 milligrams for adult men and 75 milligrams for adult women,” the New York Post said.
Chinese doctors have been reporting success with the protocol with their patients, and so far about 700 patients in a 23-hospital network in New York have now received the treatment. And, as of March 24, 2020, they’ve gotten an additional immune boost with doses of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine and antibiotic azithromycin, which also have shown promise in coronavirus treatment.
Vitamin C has two major functions that help explain its potent health benefits and the hope it promises in treating COVID-19. First, it acts as a powerful antioxidant. It also acts as a cofactor for enzymatic processes. Along with vitamin C, quercetin supplements could also be helpful. Although the vitamin C protocol is new for COVID-19 treatment, it’s been used for a while as a treatment for sepsis.
The sepsis treatment protocol was developed Dr. Paul Marik, a critical care doctor at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital in East Virginia. His retrospective before-after clinical study showed giving patients 200 mg of thiamine every 12 hours, 1,500 mg of ascorbic acid every six hours, and 50 mg of hydrocortisone every six hours for two days reduced mortality from 40% to 8.5%.
Importantly, the treatment has no side effects and is inexpensive, readily available and simple to administer, so there’s virtually no risk involved.
In 2009, IV vitamin C was shown to be a potentially lifesaving treatment for severe swine flu, so it’s understandable why both Chinese and American doctors hold hope for it with the coronavirus. In fact, it’s such a hopeful idea that there’s already a clinical trial submitted for it at ClinicalTrials.gov. More recent research, published online January 9, 2020, found Marik’s sepsis protocol lowered mortality in paediatric patients as well.
Time will tell what the clinical trial’s outcome will be, but chances are it will be favourable. Back in 2003 during the SARS pandemic, a Finnish researcher called for an investigation into the use of vitamin C, when research showed it not only protected broiler chicks against avian coronavirus, but also cut the duration and severity of common cold in humans and significantly lowered susceptibility to pneumonia.
With quercetin, as the coronavirus outbreak continues to spread, Canadian researchers Michel Chrétien and Majambu Mbikay had already begun investigating quercetin in the aftermath of the SARS epidemic. They discovered a derivative of quercetin provided broad-spectrum protection against a wide range of viruses, including SARS.
So, when the COVID-19 outbreak was announced in Wuhan City, China, in late December 2019, Chrétien contacted colleagues in China with an offer to help. In February 2020, Chrétien and his team received an official invitation to begin clinical trials with it.
As the world waits for results of these trials, research has already demonstrated that quercetin is a powerful immune booster and broad-spectrum antiviral. As such, it may be useful both for prevention and treatment of COVID-19 infection. Another powerful component in the prevention and treatment of influenza is vitamin D.
Although vitamin D does not appear to have a direct effect on the virus itself, it does strengthen immune function, thus allowing the host body to combat the virus more effectively. It also suppresses inflammatory processes. Taken together, this might make vitamin D quite useful against COVID-19.
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