Annually, around 1,000,000 Americans are diagnosed with Sepsis and of those, 300,000 die. This deadly prognosis is made when a patient has “the presence of pathogenic organisms or their toxins in the blood and tissues” or “the poisoned condition resulting from them.”
Amidst this high mortality rate, hope emerged in January, 2016 when Dr. Paul Marik took charge of the intensive care department of Sentara Norfolk General Hospital. Richard Harris, a NPR journalist, told the story of how a woman in her late forties was admitted with a “severe case of sepsis.”
Dr. Marik told him, “Her kidneys weren’t working. Her lungs weren’t working. She was going to die. In a situation like this, you start thinking out of the box.”
And so he did. Shortly thereafter, Marik recalled his recent review of research done by Dr. Berry Fowler at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond where he and his colleagues found moderate success in treating sepsis by administering intravenous vitamin C.
Taking this lead, Dr. Marik decided to proceed by using an “infusion cocktail of vitamin C, thiamine, another vitamin, and corticosteroids.” His decision resulted in his patient giving him the “shock of his life,” by greeting him alive the morning following this treatment.
Following significant proof of treatment across some 50 patients, he decided to document his experiences, which were later published in Chest. He noted among the sample patient group, only four died in the hospital – and those deaths were from their underlying diseases, not sepsis. His out-of-the-box treatment has saved the lives of 149, of 150 patients since January a year ago.
Dr. Merik’s devotion to saving patients from deadly sepsis has garnered a lot of attention. NIH recently awarded him a $3.2 million grant to run a “ carefully controlled study of vitamin C to treat sepsis, with all the usual conditions: It includes placebos; the scientists don’t know who’s getting the active drug; and it’s being conducted at several universities.”
This study is yet another step in the direction of solving the sepsis conundrum, in this case, the solution may be as simple as an intravenous Vitamin C super-dose.