Intravenous Vitamin C for Infection

There are people all around the world recommending and trying different interventions to fight the SARS-CoV-2 viral infection that has resulted in the COVID-19 pandemic. People are recommending and using everything from pharmaceuticals, to supplements, to animal byproducts. The news from China includes the use of intravenous vitamin C (abbreviated as IV C) for the sickest patients in the ICU and we are also hearing about the use of IV C in New York.

IV C does seem to be helping patients with COVID-19. The March 2020 report from Dr Richard Cheng and Dr Enqiag Mao in Shanghai discussed IV C treatment in approximately 50 patients with moderate to severe cases of COVID-19. [1] The Chinese team used IV C dosing of 10 grams for 7 – 10 days for the moderate cases and used IV C dosing of 20 grams for 7 – 10 days for severe cases. They reported that all cases that used IV C as part of the treatment survived. They also reported that the length of hospitalization was shortened by 3 – 5 days. An additional patient who was deteriorating rapidly was given 50 grams of IV C infused over 4 hours and was reported to improve without side effect from the IV C dose.

In New York City a March 24, 2020 news report quotes Dr Andrew G Weber, pulmonologist and critical-care specialist, as stating his hospital is giving 1.5 grams of IV C to hospitalized COVID-19 patients. [2] He was reported to say, “The patients who received vitamin C did significantly better than those who did not get the vitamin C.” However, Dr Weber did not give any supporting data to indicate how significant this improvement might be. He did correctly point out that the very sickest patients are known to have unmeasurable levels of vitamin C in their blood stream and it seemed logical to him to treat with vitamin C.

With these positive, albeit small isolated case reports, it seems time to clear up some misunderstandings that are circulating about the use of IV C.

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