The effect of high-dose of vitamin C on mortality among aged patients with severe COVID-19: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Authors

Na Li, Yixin Yan, Yongming Li, Jingmin Ni, Jingjing Gao, Xuemei Piao, Xiaolei Hou

Published in

Clinical and investigative medicine. Medecine clinique et experimentale. Volume 49. Issue 2. Pages 31-42. Epub Jul 13, 2026.

Abstract

Critically ill patients are frequently deficient in vitamin C. Given the significant mortality rates in the elderly population associated with COVID-19, we aimed to systematically review the literature and evaluate whether high-dose vitamin C can reduce COVID-19 mortality in this population.
Multiple data sources (PubMed, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, and medRxiv) were searched using the keywords "COVID-19" AND "vitamin C" up to November 2024. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) involving COVID-19 patients with relevant data were collected. We used a random or fixed effects meta-analysis to calculate the pooling effect.
Eight RCTs comprising 2,104 patients were ultimately included in the meta-analysis. The pooling effect (odds ratio [OR] 0.97[95% CI 0.80-1.18, P = 0.76) suggested no significant difference in mortality rates between patients treated with high-dose vitamin C and those who were not.
Vitamin C supplementation might reduce the risk of COVID-19 mortality in critically ill patients; however, this effect varied by study. Additional research is necessary to arrive at a definitive conclusion on this subject.

PMID:
42446912
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 14 Jul 2026.

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