Sepsis is a massive response by the body’s immune system to a bacteria infection which most often happens to people who have been hospitalized. The symptoms include organ failure, a drop in Blood Pressure, and difficulty breathing. Most individuals with mild sepsis survive, but once one gets to the stage of sepsis shock, the chances of dying are roughly 50 percent. However, according to the Virginia Pilot, a doctor in Norfolk may have discovered a cure for sepsis that is so absurdly simple that he is getting skepticism from the medical community.
Dr. Paul Marik at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital stumbled upon using an IV infusion of vitamin C, hydrocortisone and thiamine to treat sepsis. He first tried the treatment on a 53-year-old woman dying of sepsis in January 2016. She improved so much overnight that Dr. Marik was able to take her off a number of medications designed to keep her blood pressure up. Three days later she was out of the ICU. A year later, the woman is living at home.
Dr. Marik found that the treatment worked so well at his hospital that the rate of death from sepsis plunged from 40 percent in 2015 to just four people in 2016, an eight percent rate, all of them from the underlining condition that causes the sepsis to begin with.
Marik is now traveling the country describing his new procedure to ICU doctors. Some are greeting his technique with enthusiasm. Others are skeptical. Mark’s results are confined to a single hospital with a small number of patients. The medical community likes to see something like Marik is doing subjected to a double-blind study with thousands of patients before adopting it.
Marik agrees but also suggests that ICU doctors use the technique in the meantime for patients who might otherwise die.
A laboratory study of the vitamin C treatment suggested that it works in combination with the hydrocortisone to tamp down on the inflammation brought on by sepsis, bringing the patient out of the disease.
But a catch 22 exists concerning doing a proper study.
Treating sepsis costs $80 billion a year. Dr. Marik’s technique costs $60, A drug company, which is in the business of making money, simply has no incentive to fund such a study.
On the other hand, as Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit suggest, maybe the health insurance industry, which stands to save a boatload of money, could fund the study instead.
