The DOI matches its Crossref record; 245 of the 245 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Vitamin C Can Shorten the Length of Stay in the ICU: A Meta-Analysis
Open accessAbstract
A number of controlled trials have previously found that in some contexts, vitamin C can have beneficial effects on blood pressure, infections, bronchoconstriction, atrial fibrillation, and acute kidney injury. However, the practical significance of these effects is not clear. The purpose of this meta-analysis was to evaluate whether vitamin C has an effect on the practical outcomes: length of stay in the intensive care unit (ICU) and duration of mechanical ventilation. We identified 18 relevant controlled trials with a total of 2004 patients, 13 of which investigated patients undergoing elective cardiac surgery. We carried out the meta-analysis using the inverse variance, fixed effect options, using the ratio of means scale. In 12 trials with 1766 patients, vitamin C reduced the length of ICU stay on average by 7.8% (95% CI: 4.2% to 11.2%; p = 0.00003). In six trials, orally administered vitamin C in doses of 1–3 g/day (weighted mean 2.0 g/day) reduced the length of ICU stay by 8.6% (p = 0.003). In three trials in which patients needed mechanical ventilation for over 24 hours, vitamin C shortened the duration of mechanical ventilation by 18.2% (95% CI 7.7% to 27%; p = 0.001). Given the insignificant cost of vitamin C, even an 8% reduction in ICU stay is worth exploring. The effects of vitamin C on ICU patients should be investigated in more detail.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Measuring inconsistency in meta-analyses
Higgins, J. P. T., Thompson, S. G., Deeks, J. J., & Altman, D. G. (2003) · BMJ · doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7414.557 · Cited by 63,139
CONSORT 2010 Statement: updated guidelines for reporting parallel group randomised trials
the CONSORT Group, Schulz, K. F., Altman, D. G., & Moher, D. (2010) · BMC Medicine · doi:10.1186/1741-7015-8-18 · Cited by 13,371
CONSORT 2010 Statement: updated guidelines for reporting parallel group randomised trials
Schulz, K. F., Altman, D. G., Moher, D., & for the CONSORT Group (2010) · BMJ · doi:10.1136/bmj.c332 · Cited by 9,329
Severe Sepsis and Septic Shock
Angus, D. C., & van der Poll, T. (2013) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejmra1208623 · Cited by 3,961
Carr, A., & Maggini, S. (2017) · Nutrients · doi:10.3390/nu9111211 · Cited by 2,035
Is the Placebo Powerless?: An Analysis of Clinical Trials Comparing Placebo with No Treatment
Hróbjartsson, A., & Gøtzsche, P. C. (2001) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejm200105243442106 · Cited by 1,503
Vitamin C pharmacokinetics in healthy volunteers: evidence for a recommended dietary allowance
Levine, M., Conry-Cantilena, C., Wang, Y., Welch, R. W., Washko, P. W., Dhariwal, K. R., Park, J. B., Lazarev, A., Graumlich, J. F., King, J., et al. (1996) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.93.8.3704 · Cited by 1,325
Vitamin C pharmacokinetics: Implications for oral and intravenous use
Padayatty, S. J., Sun, H., Wang, Y., Riordan, H. D., Hewitt, S. M., Katz, A., Wesley, R. A., & Levine, M. (2004) · Annals of Internal Medicine · doi:10.7326/0003-4819-140-7-200404060-00010 · Cited by 992
Metnitz, P. G. H., Krenn, C. G., Steltzer, H., Lang, T., Ploder, J., Lenz, K., Le Gall, J.-R., & Druml, W. (2002) · Critical Care Medicine · doi:10.1097/00003246-200209000-00016 · Cited by 919
Hydrocortisone, Vitamin C, and Thiamine for the Treatment of Severe Sepsis and Septic Shock
Marik, P. E., Khangoora, V., Rivera, R., Hooper, M. H., & Catravas, J. (2017) · Chest · doi:10.1016/j.chest.2016.11.036 · Cited by 887
Cited by
A Review of Micronutrients and the Immune System–Working in Harmony to Reduce the Risk of Infection
Gombart, A. F., Pierre, A., & Maggini, S. (2020) · Nutrients · doi:10.3390/nu12010236 · Cited by 1,358
Berger, M. M., Shenkin, A., Schweinlin, A., Amrein, K., Augsburger, M., Biesalski, H.-K., Bischoff, S. C., Casaer, M. P., Gundogan, K., Lepp, H.-L., et al. (2022) · Clinical Nutrition · doi:10.1016/j.clnu.2022.02.015 · Cited by 615
Shakoor, H., Feehan, J., Al Dhaheri, A. S., Ali, H. I., Platat, C., Ismail, L. C., Apostolopoulos, V., & Stojanovska, L. (2021) · Maturitas · doi:10.1016/j.maturitas.2020.08.003 · Cited by 465
Oxidative Stress and Inflammation in Acute and Chronic Lung Injuries
Bezerra, F. S., Lanzetti, M., Nesi, R. T., Nagato, A. C., Silva, C. P. E., Kennedy-Feitosa, E., Melo, A. C., Cattani-Cavalieri, I., Porto, L. C., & Valenca, S. S. (2023) · Antioxidants · doi:10.3390/antiox12030548 · Cited by 336
Pilot trial of high-dose vitamin C in critically ill COVID-19 patients
Zhang, J., Rao, X., Li, Y., Zhu, Y., Liu, F., Guo, G., Luo, G., Meng, Z., De Backer, D., Xiang, H., et al. (2021) · Annals of Intensive Care · doi:10.1186/s13613-020-00792-3 · Cited by 253
Metadata
- Authors
- Hemilä, H., & Chalker, E.
- Venue
- Nutrients
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2019-03-27
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 708
- ISSN
- 2072-6643 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2922732623
- Cited by
- 257
- References
- 245
- FWCI
- 10.50
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Vitamin C Can Shorten the Length of Stay in the ICU: A Meta-Analysis. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.3390/nu11040708
- The paper
- Hemilä, H., & Chalker, E. (2019). Vitamin C Can Shorten the Length of Stay in the ICU: A Meta-Analysis. Nutrients. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu11040708
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
