Vitamins for Septic Shock: Let’s Face It, They Don’t Work

Despite the hope, preliminary data suggest they don’t make a difference. In fact, they may even be harmful.

Septic shock is a devastating illness. It kills thousands of people around the world each year. It killed my own daughter, in fact. And so, anything that can possibly help treat this horrible illness is most welcome.

Hence the great enthusiasm that greeted the initial study that suggested high dose vitamins improved mortality in septic shock. Vitamins are low risk medications, relatively inexpensive, and easy to administer. And if they can reduce the mortality of septic shock, fabulous!

Based on this initial — and, admittedly, low quality — study, vitamins were widely adopted by critical care clinicians around the world, including me. The “purists,” many of my colleagues among them, told me that I should not use them because, there is no evidence they work. What they mean by this that there is no randomized, double-blinded, controlled clinical trial that has demonstrated that vitamins improve outcome — especially mortality — in septic shock.

“Who cares?” said the enthusiasts like me. “They are pretty safe medications, and if they may work, then what’s the harm?” Well, the purists, it seems…