Dear practitioner
Vitamin D is now firmly on the map for COVID-19 prevention but what about vitamin C? We urgently seek your support by means of a signature, for a timely and important initiative. Let me explain.
My co-authors and I (Professor Paul Marik – Chief of critical care medicine at East Virginia Medical School; Emeritus Professor of pharmacology David Smith from the University of Oxford; Associate Professor Anitra Carr – Director of Nutrition in Medicine Research at Otago University; Professor Iain Whitaker and colleagues Drs Stephen Ali and Tom Jovic at NHS Wales, University of Swansea) have a review paper entitled “Vitamin C—An Adjunctive Therapy for Respiratory Infection, Sepsis and COVID-19” – see https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202010.0407/v1
We also have the support of professors of public health, immunology and nutrition. My interest in vitamin C started as a student of the late twice Nobel Prize winner Dr Linus Pauling, who was the Patron of the Institute for Optimum Nutrition, which I founded in the UK in 1984. He dedicated the last 39 years of his life to vitamin C research and put the C in colds. His parting words to me were ‘follow the logic.’ The logic for vitamin C for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 is impeccable. We believe we now have the responsibility to put the C in COVID.
Our paper is about to complete peer review to then be published in the journal Nutrients. It shows that there is already RCT evidence that vitamin C reduces hospital stay, ventilation time and mortality as well as shortening duration and severity of viral infections in the early stage. It includes the results of an RCT in critically ill COVID-19 patients with SOFA≥3 showing 68% less mortality with vitamin C vs placebo and substantial reduction in the inflammatory marker IL-6 (19 vs.158). There are currently 45 registered trials on vitamin C and COVID. There is also evidence that overt vitamin C deficiency, as seen in scurvy, is remarkably common, estimated to occur in 4% of all over 65 and in up to 40% of those in care homes. There is also evidence that all significant risk factors – age, sex, race, co-morbidities – share one common attribute namely low plasma vitamin C. This low plasma vitamin C not only predicts severity of COVID-19 but also mortality in ICUs where the majority of patients being tested have hypovitaminosis C if not overt deficiency (≤11µmol/l). Many have undetectable levels, as seen in scurvy. Those ICUs now using vitamin C appropriately are effectively reporting no deaths except in those over 85 with end-stage disease. The evidence compiled in this review is the much needed document to approach government agencies and healthcare service leaders to urge a rapid change in policy.
We believe that if vitamin C was taken seriously and used appropriately in high doses upon infection there is a potential to save so many lives and prevent coronavirus infection resulting in severe COVID-19.
For this purpose only this website – www.vitaminC4covid.com – has been created, which will be officially launched on publication of the review to obtain mass support for a petition calling for specific and doable actions. Please Read The Petition on the website. You’ll see there’s a 5 minute film, a 10 minute webinar, the research paper as the supporting science, FAQs, podcasts and other resources to help you get up to speed on the extraordinary potential of vitamin C in relation to COVID-19.
Before we publicly launch in December we invite you to sign up, adding your support to this initiative, so that we can hit the ground running with several thousand doctors, nutritional and other healthcare practitioners, frontline workers, scientists and health researchers on board.
We are united in the common cause of saving lives, protecting health and freedom, and giving, in this case, vitamin C the recognition it deserves. (In case you wonder, we love vitamin D, zinc, quercitin, good diet etc too but this is a very specific ‘arrow’ with hundreds of supporting studies, impeccable rationale and 45 ongoing clinical trials. Launched properly, with your support, this is an arrow that will be hard to stop reaching its target. A big success for vitamin C has the potential to change the whole paradigm for nutritional medicine.)
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask us. We are contactable at [email protected]
Stay healthy. Stay free. Thank you for your support,
Patrick Holford, Rob Verkerk & Rebecca Pilkington – campaign director, advisor and manager
2 Comments. Leave new
Brilliant! I have been waiting for this.
Firmly behind you and will spread the word.
Well done, Patrick, on pulling together such a much-needed initiative. I sincerely hope it has a major impact and persuades critical care doctors to utilise IV vitamin C therapy for all Covid-19 patients.