Evaluation and comparison of vitamin A supplementation with standard therapies in the treatment of patients with COVID-19.

Background: Incomplete data are often presented for determining the role of vitamin A supplement therapy for improving treatment outcomes in patients with COVID-19. Aims: We compared treatment effects between a group that received vitamin A added to the standard COVID-19 treatment and another group that received the standard drug treatment alone. Methods: Participants in this triple-blind controlled trial comprised 182 COVID-19 outpatients in Saveh City, Markazi Province, Islamic Republic of Iran, in 2020. Patients were randomly divided into experimental (n = 91) and control (n = 91) groups. Patients in the control group received the national standard treatment for COVID-19 (hydroxychloroquine), and those in the intervention group received 25 000 IU/d oral vitamin A for 10 days in addition to the standard treatment recommended by the national protocol. We evaluated the clinical symptoms, paraclinical criteria, and hospitalization status before and after 10 days of interventions. Results: The treatment groups did not differ significantly in clinical and paraclinical symptoms before the intervention. However, clinical symptoms such as fever, body ache, weakness and fatigue, paraclinical symptoms, white blood cell count, and C-reactive protein showed significantly greater decreases in the experimental group 10 days post-intervention compared with the standard treatment alone (P < 0.05). Conclusion: Vitamin A supplementation demonstrated efficacy in improving some clinical and paraclinical symptoms in patients with COVID-19. Future studies should evaluate vitamin A supplementation with a larger sample size and compare different dosages, especially in hospitalized patients.