A new study suggests that vitamin C and zinc don’t help fight off COVID-19, even when they’re taken at high doses.
What’s going on?
The study — published in mid-February in JAMA Network Open — found that vitamin C and zinc don't lessen or fight off COVID-19 symptoms.
- This study was the first randomized clinical trial that tested the two supplements against COVID-19, according to CNN.
Researchers reviewed 214 adults with confirmed COVID-19 infections, per Medical Xpress. They monitored how people responded to 10 days of zinc gluconate (50 milligrams/mg), 10 days of vitamin C (8,000 mg), both or usual care.
- The study’s findings were that the two supplements did not benefit people who were isolating with COVID-19.
- Researchers stopped the study early because “the findings were so unimpressive,” according to CNN.
“Unfortunately, these two supplements failed to live up to their hype,” wrote two of the study’s authors, Dr. Erin Michos of John Hopkins and Houston Methodist’s Dr. Miguel Cainzos-Achirica.
Other vaccines
Back in September, a new study from the University of Chicago suggested that a lack of vitamin D could create more severe coronavirus cases, which I wrote about for the Deseret News.
- The study found that an untreated vitamin D deficiency could increase a patient’s likelihood of testing positive for COVID-19 by 77%, per Yahoo News.
- “In this single-center, retrospective cohort study, likely deficient vitamin D status was associated with increased COVID-19 risk, a finding that suggests that randomized trials may be needed to determine whether vitamin D affects COVID-19 risk,” the study said, as I wrote about for the Deseret News.