Effect of Antioxidant Vitamins on Coagulopathy and Nosocomial Pneumonia after Severe Trauma
Jean-Francois Pittet, MD

This grant proposal will examine the effect of antioxidant vitamins (vitamins C and E ) on patients who suffer severe trauma and have severe bleeding. Recent clinical studies have demonstrated that patients with severe bleeding from trauma do not coagulate or clot normally before they are treated. It has previously been shown that one of the major reasons why these trauma patients do not coagulate normally is specific derangements with the protein (protein C) that normally prevents unwanted spontaneous formation of blood clot in the vessels.

Antioxidant vitamins C and E have been shown to reduce mortality, organ failure, and surgical site infections in trauma patients and to attenuate the procoagulant activity associated with the acute response in humans. The study proposes to determine whether the administration of a low-cost and safe therapy, i.e., antioxidant vitamins C and E, given early after severe trauma would attenuate the posttraumatic coagulation derangements and significantly decrease lung infections in trauma patients.

The results obtained with this grant proposal may help to find new treatments that may reduce the severity of bleeding and infection after trauma in humans.