A treatment that combined vitamin C, hydrocortisone and thiamine didn't help patients with septic shock, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Researchers had high hopes that this mix of agents would provide a cost-effective treatment for septic shock patients, particularly after reports from a well-regarded physicians Paul E. Marik, MD, of Norfolk, Va., who said in 2017 that thr combination showed remarkable results in treating septic shock, according to NPR.
But the JAMA study shows that this treatment may not be the one researchers have been waiting for. The study is the largest published to date on this subject, and it involved 216 septic shock patients from 10 intensive care units in Australia, New Zealand and Brazil.
The patients were randomized into two groups: 109 patients in the intervention group received a combination treatment of vitamin C, hydrocortisone, and thiamine, while 107 in the control group received only hydrocortisone. Of the 216 patients, only the 211 who gave consent and completed the primary outcome measurement were included in the study.
The study shows that both groups had similar rates of death — 28.6 percent in the intervention group and 24.5 percent in the control group.
Researchers found little difference in other clinical measurements between the two groups, including the amount of time before a patient received vasopressors, a group of drugs used to treat severely low blood pressure. Patients in the intervention received vasopressors after about 122 hours, while those in the control received the drugs after about 124 hours.