According to a recent study, low-dose ascorbic acid as an additional treatment for coronavirus illness 2019 (COVID-19) appears to reduce the incidence of thrombosis but has no discernible effect on death.
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Researchers used 739 critically sick adult patients
with confirmed COVID-19 who were admitted to the intensive care unit in a
two-center, noninterventional, retrospective cohort analysis. The primary
outcome was in-hospital mortality, which was compared between individuals who
received supplementary ascorbic acid and those who did not. Acute kidney
injury, thrombosis, and respiratory failure were among the other outcomes
studied, as were length of stay (LOS), mechanical ventilation (MV) duration,
and complications such acute kidney injury, thrombosis, and respiratory
failure.
A total of 158 patients (21.3%) received ascorbic acid
treatment, whereas the other 581 patients (78.7%) did not. In-hospital death
rates in the ascorbic acid group were considerably lower before propensity
score matching (33.6 percent vs 49.3 percent; p=0.0006), however this effect
was diminished after matching for baseline severity levels, study location, and
systematic use of corticosteroids (p=0.11).
The risk of in-hospital mortality was comparable
between those who received ascorbic acid and those who did not (odds ratio
[OR], 0.77, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 0.476–1.234; p=0.27),
according to a propensity score-adjusted logistic regression analysis. The
30-day mortality rate was the same.
In terms of complications, thrombosis/infarction was considerably
less common in ascorbic acid-treated patients (6.1 percent vs 13 percent; OR,
0.42, 95 percent CI, 0.184–0.937; p=0.03). Other issues were not shown to have
a similar effect.
A low supplemental dose of enteral ascorbic acid
resulted in a considerable reduction in thrombosis risk throughout ICU stay, based
on the outcomes. According to the researchers, “the underlying advantage of
ascorbic acid on thrombosis could be attributable to its anti-inflammatory
properties.” “More research is needed to corroborate these findings.”
Source: Sci Rep 2021;11:17648