Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 May 10:12:674681.
doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2021.674681. eCollection 2021.

Vitamin C May Increase the Recovery Rate of Outpatient Cases of SARS-CoV-2 Infection by 70%: Reanalysis of the COVID A to Z Randomized Clinical Trial

Harri Hemilä  1 , Anitra Carr  2 , Elizabeth Chalker  3
Affiliations

Vitamin C May Increase the Recovery Rate of Outpatient Cases of SARS-CoV-2 Infection by 70%: Reanalysis of the COVID A to Z Randomized Clinical Trial

Harri Hemilä et al. Front Immunol. .
No abstract available

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; ascorbic acid; common cold; quantile treatment effect; randomized controlled trials; statistics; treatment outcome.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The quantile treatment effect (QTE) of 8 g/day of vitamin C on the duration of symptoms in outpatient cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection. The horizontal axis shows the distribution of the duration by percentiles. The black stepped line indicates the QTE of vitamin C. The horizontal red dotted line indicates the null effect. The blue dashed line shows the 1.2-day mean effect of vitamin C. The red vertical bar at the 60th percentile indicates the 95% CI (-4.61 to -3 days; t = 7.3 P = 10-10), calculated with the fit.crq procedure of the R-statistical software (–17). The red numbers at the bottom indicate the lowest percentile level for the odd number of days of duration of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the usual care arm. For example, 9-10 day infections cover the percentile range from 58th to 76th, which corresponds to 9 patients, as the total number of usual care patients was 50. The QTE curve is stopped at the 88th percentile since 6 patients in the usual care group were censored, i.e., did not recover by the end of the follow-up. See extracted data in Table S1 , and our calculations and the redrawn recovery curve in the Supplementary File .
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Markwell NW. Vitamin C in the Prevention of Colds. Med J Aust (1947) 2:777–8. 10.5694/j.1326-5377.1947.tb74386.x - DOI - PubMed
    1. Hemilä H, Chalker E. Vitamin C for Preventing and Treating the Common Cold. Cochrane Database Syst Rev (2013) 31:CD000980. 10.1002/14651858.CD000980.pub4 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Hemilä H. Vitamin C and Infections. Nutrients (2017) 9:339. 10.3390/nu9040339 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Carr AC, Maggini S. Vitamin C and Immune Function. Nutrients (2017) 9:1211. 10.3390/nu9111211 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Anderson TW, Suranyi G, Beaton GH. The Effect on Winter Illness of Large Doses of Vitamin C. Can Med Assoc J (1974) 111:31–6. - PMC - PubMed