Vitamin C may affect lung infections

Vitamin C was identified in the early 1900s in the search for a deficient substance responsible for scurvy, which was a serious disease of sailors in the Age of Sail. In the early literature, scurvy was directly linked to pneumonia. The American paediatrician Alfred Hess carried out extensive studies on scurvy and summarized autopsy findings as follows: ‘pneumonia, lobular or lobar, is one of the most frequent complications [of scurvy] and causes of death’ and ‘secondary pneumonias, usually broncho-pneumonic in type, are of common occurrence, and in many [scurvy] epidemics constitute the prevailing cause of death’. Starting in the 1930s, some German and US physicians proposed that vitamin C would be beneficial in the treatment of pneumonia.

Although the burden of pneumonia has decreased dramatically in developed countries during the past century, lung infections are still a leading cause of mortality and morbidity globally. Therefore, the question of whether vitamin C might affect pneumonia is an issue worthy of systematic consideration.