No abstract

No abstract

Currently available anti-viral drugs may be useful in reducing the viral load but are not providing the necessary physiological effects to reduce the SARS-CoV-2 complications efficiently. Treatments that provide better clinical outcomes are urgently needed. Vitamin C (ascorbic acid, AA) is an essential nutrient with many biological roles that have been proven to play an important part in immune function; it serves as an antioxidant, an anti-viral, and exerts anti-thrombotic effects among many other physiological benefits. Research has proven that AA at pharmacological doses can be beneficial to patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and other respiratory illnesses, including sepsis. In addition, High-Dose Intravenous Vitamin C (HDIVC) has proven to be effective in patients with different viral diseases, such as influenza, chikungunya, Zika, and dengue. Moreover, HDIVC has been demonstrated to be very safe. Regarding COVID-19, vitamin C can suppress the cytokine storm, reduce thrombotic complications, and diminish alveolar and vascular damage, among other benefits. Due to these reasons, the use of HDIVC should be seriously considered in complicated COVID-19 patients. In this article, we will emphasize vitamin C’s multiple roles in the most prominent pathophysiological processes presented by the COVID-19 disease.

Stereotactic radiosurgery of the brain may be accomplished with a linear accelerator by performing several noncoplanar arcs of a highly collimated beam focused at a point. The shape of the radiation distribution produced by this technique is affected by the beam energy, field size, and the number and size of the arcs. The influence of these parameters on the resulting radiation distributions was analyzed by computing dose volume histograms for a typical brain. Dose volume functions were computed for: (a) the energy range of 4-24 MV x rays; (b) target sizes of 1-4 cm; and (c) 1-11 arcs and dynamic rotation. The dose volume histograms were found to be dependent on the number of arcs for target sizes of 1-4 cm. However, these differences were minimal for techniques with 4 arcs or more. The influence of beam energy on the dose volume histogram was also found to be minimal.