Does vitamin C help prevent or treat pneumonia?

Bottom Line

Due to the small number of included studies and very low certainty of the existing evidence, we are uncertain of the effect of vitamin C supplementation for the prevention and treatment of pneumonia. Overall, the included studies were judged to be at either high or unclear risk of bias for random sequence generation, allocation concealment, and blinding; and the evidence certainty was very low. Two studies assessed the effect of vitamin C supplementation for pneumonia prevention; we judged the certainty of the evidence as very low. (S1)

Cochrane (2021) rated this evidence very low certainty.

The registry also contains 1 later systematic review or guideline on this question (2024). It is not summarised here; see the full list in Research Rail.

Sources

1. S1 Vitamin C supplementation for prevention and treatment of pneumonia. Padhani ZA, Moazzam Z, Ashraf A et al. · 2021 Nov 18 · The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · Systematic review / meta-analysis

This report screened 31 items (25 research or guidance records, 6 community posts); the full list is available in Research Rail.