History of scurvy and use of vitamin C in critical illness: A narrative review
Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data
Narrative review without systematic methodology or new human data
OpenAlex W4297192991 · doi:10.1002/ncp.10914
What was done
This is a narrative review outlining the historical context of scurvy and summarizing the biological mechanisms and clinical evidence for using vitamin C in critically ill patients, specifically focusing on sepsis and COVID-19.
What was found
The abstract reports no numerical findings or effect sizes. It describes proposed mechanisms of vitamin C in critical illness, including restoring vascular responsiveness to vasoactive agents, improving microcirculatory blood flow, preserving endothelial barriers, enhancing bacterial defense, and preventing apoptosis.
Why it matters
It contextualizes the ongoing clinical interest in vitamin C as an inexpensive, biologically plausible antioxidant intervention in severe inflammatory conditions.
Limits
As a narrative review, it lacks systematic search criteria, risk-of-bias assessment, and meta-analytic pooling. The abstract provides no primary human outcome data or sample sizes.
Cited by
- contradicts The first descriptions of vitamin deficiency states occurred in the 1940s in populations consuming pure carbohydrate diets, including Japanese prisoner-of-war camps and the Bataan Death March during World War II.