The role of vitamin C in sepsis is still controversial, we aimed to systematically review the efficacy of intravenous vitamin C supplementation in the treatment of sepsis.

MEDLINE, EmBase, Web of Science, WanFang Data and CNKI were comprehensively searched to collect randomized controlled trails (RCTs) of vitamin C supplementation for patients with sepsis or sepsis shock from January 2000 to March 2021. Two researchers independently screened the literature, extracted the data and accessed the risk of bias in the included studies; meta-analysis was then performed by using Revman 5.4 software.

A total of 10 RCTs involving 1400 participants were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that intravenous vitamin C supplementation can improve SOFA (ΔSOFA) within 72 h [RR = 1.32,95% CI(0.80,1.85), P < 0.0001] of septic patients. There were no difference on short term mortality (28–30d)[RR = 0.83,95% CI(0.65,1.05), P = 0.11], long term mortality (90d) [RR = 1.16,95% CI(0.82,1.66), P = 0.40], hospital LOS[RR = 0.15,95% CI(−0.73,1.03), P = 0.55], ventilator-free days[RR = 0.09,95% CI(−0.24,0.42), P = 0.60], ICU-LOS[RR = 0.22,95% CI(−0.13,0.57), P = 0.22], between two groups. The results of Subgroup analysis showed that intravenous vitamin C alone can reduce the risk of short term mortality (28–30d) [RR = 0.61,95% CI(0.47,0.79), P = 0.0002]of sepsis patients.

Based on current RCTs, our work indicated that mono-intravenous vitamin C therapy may reduce short-term mortality of sepsis patients, and it may protect organ functions. Due to the limitation of the quantity and quality of included studies, the above conclusions need to be verified by more large scale and high quality randomized control trials.