The data underpinning an infamous study of vitamin C for sepsis may be fraudulent, according to an analysis by an Australian physician and statistician that's making waves among hospitalists and intensivists.
Kyle Sheldrick, MBBS, who is completing his PhD at the University of New South Wales, alleges that the pre- and post- comparison groups involved in the 94-patient study were too similar to be realistic.
"This is extreme," Sheldrick told MedPage Today in an interview. "This is probably the most obviously fake data I have seen. ... These groups are more similar than would be probable."
The paper, led by Paul Marik, MD -- a controversial figure during the COVID-19 pandemic who recently left his position at Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) -- has been the subject of much debate in the intensive care community since it was published in 2017. If clinicians could prevent death from sepsis with a simple regimen of hydrocortisone, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), and thiamine (the procedure was dubbed the HAT protocol), many lives easily could be saved.
"Obviously this paper sparked interest around the globe, but it's hard to express how much excitement there was locally," Bryan Carmody, MD, a pediatric nephrologist at EVMS, told MedPage Today. "I remember speaking to several faculty members who predicted that Dr. Marik might one day win the Nobel Prize."
But many were skeptical from the beginning. "The effect size seemed just impossible," said Nick Mark, MD, an ICU physician...
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