A young Australian man who was critically ill with COVID-19 and suffering early stages of blood poisoning made a remarkable recovery after being given massive doses of vitamin C, according to his doctors.

Professor Rinaldo Bellomo, director of Intensive Care at Melbourne’s Austin Health, said the 40-year-old’s health had started to deteriorate significantly from COVID-19, with the man losing kidney function, and his blood pressure plummeting.

Sepsis — or blood poisoning — was starting to take hold of his body and time was running out.

“We were dealing with somebody who was very unwell. We felt we were in a very difficult situation, and the patient’s life was under serious threat,” he said.

Professor Bellomo knew researchers at the Florey Institute had some promising experimental findings using megadose vitamin C to treat sepsis.

With the family’s consent, doctors gave the patient the same treatment the Florey researchers had trialled in animals.

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The man was given an initial dose of 30 grams of sodium ascorbate (vitamin C) over 30 minutes, then a maintenance dose of 30 grams over six and a half hours.

“This is the equivalent of 5,000 oranges pumping through his veins,” Professor Bellomo said.

An over-the-counter vitamin C supplement is 500mg, meaning this megadose was 60 times the normal dosage, and had to be administered under hospital conditions.

Sepsis occurs when a patient can’t respond to an infection that is out of control in the body.

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Organs start to fail and the patient goes into septic shock.

It’s the most common cause of death in intensive care units, and a common cause of death for people gravely ill with COVID-19.

Often patients need to have limbs amputated to survive.

Professor Bellomo said after the patient had the megadose of vitamin C, the changes were “‘remarkable”.

“In a short period of time, we saw improved regulation of blood pressure, arterial blood oxygen levels and kidney function,” he said.

His temperature also improved.

“The patient was able to be taken off machine ventilation 12 days after starting sodium ascorbate treatment and discharged from hospital without any complications 22 days later,” he said.

‘This can’t be true’

The Florey Institute’s Professor Clive May had collaborated with Professor Bellomo for many years, keeping him up to date with the promising results they were seeing in the lab with the sepsis treatment.

“He didn’t believe us. He said ‘this can’t be true’,” Professor May said.

Colleague Dr Yugeesh Lankadeva sent the intensive care doctor videos of what was happening in the lab.

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