Despite effective vaccines, there is still a need for effective treatments for COVID, especially for people in the community. Dietary supplements have long been used to treat respiratory infections, and preliminary evidence indicates some may be effective in people with COVID-19. This study tested whether a combination of vitamin C, vitamin D3, vitamin K2 and zinc would improve overall health and decrease symptom burden in outpatients diagnosed with COVID-19.
Participants were randomised to receive either vitamin C (6 g), vitamin D3 (1000 units), vitamin K2 (240 μg) and zinc acetate (75 mg) or placebo daily for 21 days and were followed for 12 weeks. An additional loading dose of 50 000 units vitamin D3 (or placebo) was given on day one. The primary outcome was participant-reported overall health using the EuroQol Visual Assessment Scale summed over 21 days. Secondary outcomes included health status, symptom severity, symptom duration, delayed return to usual health, frequency of hospitalisation and mortality.
A total of 90 patients (46 control, 44 treatment) were randomised. The study was stopped prematurely due to insufficient capacity for recruitment. The mean difference (control-treatment) in cumulative overall health was -37.4 (95% CI -157.2 to 82.3), p=0.53 on a scale of 0-2100. No clinically or statistically significant differences were seen in any secondary outcomes.
The authors concluded that, in this double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomised trial of outpatients diagnosed with COVID-19, the dietary supplements vitamin C, vitamin D3, vitamin K2 and zinc acetate showed no clinically or statistically significant effects on the documented measures of health compared with a placebo when given for 21 days. Termination due to feasibility limited our ability to demonstrate the efficacy of these supplements for COVID-19. Further research is needed to determine clinical utility.
In several ways I am puzzled by this study. On the other hand, I should congratulate the naturopathic authors for honestly reporting such a squarely negative result. One could, of course, argue that the study was under-powered and that thus the findings are not conclusive. However, the actual survival curve depicting the results show clearly that there was not even the tiniest trend for the supplement to show any effect. In other words, a larger sample would have most likely yielded the same result.
Participants randomised to the treatment arm received:
- Vitamin D3 50 000 units orally once on day 1 of the study (capsule).
- Vitamin K2/D3 120 μg/500 units orally two times per day for 21 days (liquid).
- Vitamin C/Zinc acetate 2 g/25 mg orally three times daily for 21 days (capsule).
I fail to understand why the researchers might have conceived the hypothesis that such a mixture would be effective. Only 90 of a planned 200 participants were enrolled in this study which ran between September 2021 and April 2022. I fail to understand why recruitment was so poor that the study eventually had to be aborted. My speculation is that the naturopaths in charge of running the trial were too inexperienced in conducting such research to make it a success.
The study was supported by the Ottawa Integrative Cancer Centre Foundation and by Mavis and Martin Sacher. All investigational products for this study were provided in-kind by New Roots Herbal. Perhaps in future these sponsors should think again before they support amateurs pretending to be scientists?
13 Responses to A dietary supplement for COVID patients?
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
In my view, that was a bad study from the get-go. The study should have been designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the vitamins and minerals PREVENTING covid-19, not treating covid-19.
Administering the said treatment was bound to fail just as much as attempting to give a covid vaccination after infection.
Good luck getting an IRB approval for such a study. Good luck finding people who were not previously exposed to COVID and would agree to getting exposed after taking some vitamins.
lol, sir you ARE speaking about a trial to treat the virus with vitamins, no ? So we are STILL after all this time at a place where there is no other valid first line of defense ? Are we presuming the makers of the vaccines did not enlist patients to take an experimental and potentially dangerous jab and then be exposed to the virus ? I think so.
And if so, we know all too well why the pharmacies are not interested in studying better first line treatments if vitamins could be effective.
you own me an answer!
😂🤣 Johny a.k.a RG,
There is.this pesky thing called scientific plausibility that comes in the way of studying every dumb hypothesis under the sun. Perhaps you would also want to study if injecting bleach can prevent COVID.
I’ve actually done my own studies on covid, there are FDA approved supplements that can prevent covid-19 such as NAC. And other FDA approved first line treatments for covid such as Ivermectin that have been successfully used to prevent and treat covid-19. I’ve seen the results myself in me and my family.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9651994/
I’ll take personal anecdote over many RCTs that are poorly designed or have monetary self-interest at hand.
John: you are priceless!
I rarely laughed that much.
Good for you, John a.k.a RG. I too have done serious studies. On COVID vaccines. My study design is very simple and effective, it involves staring seriously at the vaccine vial before I get jabbed. Several of my studies confirmed a well-known and Dr.Fauci endorsed fact that vaccines are safe and effective. Therefore, I went ahead and got all jabs including all of Dr. Fauci recommended boosters. I have never gotten sick since I got the jab and I feel invincible. Several of my family members and friends feel the same way after they go jabby-jabbied. My moto in life is this: Shut up and get jabbed!
@
RGJohnAh, you mean you followed the InstaXFaceSubstackBitChute ‘discussions’ from like-minded people …
This is a lie. The study you linked to does NOT say that NAC was found to prevent COVID-19, only that it “could contribute to the prevention or control of infections caused by RNA viruses”. I’m afraid that you either didn’t read this study, and/or didn’t understand it.
Besides, even if NAC were effective in preventing COVID-19, then do you suggest that people should take this pharmaceutical product daily for the rest of their life? Contrary to a vaccine, the preventive effect of any pharmaceutical product ends shortly after people stop taking it. And oh, even though generally safe, it can have some annoying side effects such as dry mouth, nausea and rashes. Then there’s of course the cost of ~30 cents a day. This doesn’t seem like much, but it’s still €100 per year – money that will end up in the pockets of some anonymous pharmaceutical companies.
Yup, Ivermectin is indeed a first-line treatment – for parasitic infections, that is.
This is a lie. Ivermectin does not do anything against COVID-19, neither as a preventative nor as a treatment. It is only approved for treating parasitic infections.
Ah, yes, of course. Just like how medieval doctors evaluated the efficacy of their treatments: just trying it on a very small group of people, and if they got better, it worked.
Given that you even failed to understand the quite clear results of the NAC study, I wouldn’t give a dime for your competence at assessing the design or any other aspect of RCTs. All this apart of course from your other antivaccine and conspiracy beliefs.
Richard
Your believed Pfizer covid vaccine neither is one hundred percent at preventing covid. Neither does it prevent infecting others. Finally, it is only about fifty percent effective at prevent infection after three months.
That does not meet the previous standard for an effective vaccine.
@
RGJohnNo vaccine is 100% effective. The only 100% effective measure for preventing infections is complete isolation, which of course is untenable.
Of course it prevents infections, just not 100%. People in whom the vaccine prevents illness are also much less infectious to other people.
Hilarious to hear you complain about a vaccine being only 50% effective when you just promoted several treatments that were not only 0% effective, but also utterly impractical – even if the medicine in question had some preventive quality, it would require people to keep taking it indefinitely in order to stay protected.
Anyway, even just 3 months of moderate protection from a vaccine can prevent a lot of illness during the winter season, so it’s still much better than nothing. My spouse certainly went and got her latest booster shot last week (I’m not old enough to be eligible yet, otherwise I would have got one too). Oh, and she had exactly zero side effects.
@
RGJohnOh, there are a few things that can prevent serious illness and death from viral infections. The oldest one is to avoid contact with infected persons. Unfortunately, this has become rather difficult due to our extremely mobile lifestyle, where an asymptomatic carrier can literally spread a virus around the world in just a few days. And it also doesn’t help that lots of less intelligent people are vehemently opposed to measures such as face masks, social distancing in general, and prohibiting mass spreading events in particular, all in the name of ‘freedom’ – except apparently ‘freedom from disease’.
But so far, vaccination is the only effect preventive measure against harmful viral disease. There are no indications that similar protection might be accomplished by taking any kind of substance, regardless whether it is certain foods, supplements or medicines.
Yes, there are lots of people who live super-healthy lives, eating only the healthiest foods, taking extra supplements to make sure they get sufficient vitamins, and of course taking exercise, refraining from alcohol and tobacco etcetera. There are no indications that these people are less prone to viral infections than other, less health-conscious but otherwise healthy people.
The opposite of course is not true: existing health problems DO pose an extra risk in case of viral infections. This is also why frail people and those with pre-existing conditions were the among first to receive COVID vaccines.
This is a lie. Those mRNA vaccines were not experimental at all; they have been under development for at least 25 years, and human trials have been carried out for the past 10 years. Also, they have gone through ALL the same tests as any other vaccine or medicine brought onto the market. The urgency of a world-wide pandemic just made the red tape (which normally takes many months between steps) go much faster. Also, trials were conducted concurrently rather than one after the other.
And about ‘potentially dangerous’: everything in life is ‘potentially dangerous’, and most things are far more dangerous than getting a COVID vaccine. Just going out the door exposes you to the risk of harm and even dying in all kinds of ways – far bigger risks than the risk of suffering harm through vaccination. For instance in the UK, you have an annual risk of about 1 in 2,000 of death or serious injury in traffic. The same risk for COVID vaccines is in the order of around one in a million. So even if you would get a COVID jab every single day, then that would still be less risky than just going out the door and take part in traffic.
As I explained above and Talker also remarked already, there is no reason to assume that taking extra vitamins can help prevent diseases. Besides, naturopaths and other quacks (especially orthomolecular quacks) have subjected their customers to all sorts of vitamin-rich regimes, both aimed at treating and preventing disease, and none of those vitamin treatments has shown to be effective in any way.
Vaccination is by far the most effective and also safest way to prevent infectious disease; antivaxxers are for the most part just medically uneducated needle-phobic paranoids.
“My speculation is that the naturopaths in charge of running the trial were too inexperienced in conducting such research to make it a success.”
My speculation is that Beavis and Butt‑Head would have done a better job of running the trial.