Thiamine appears to improve outcomes for critically ill patients…

There is evidence to suggest that critically ill patients are commonly thiamine deficient. In a recently published study researchers compared outcomes for 123 patients with septic shock who received IV thiamine supplementation within 24 hours of hospital admission with those of a a matched cohort of patients with the same diagnosis but not receiving thiamine. The primary objective was to determine if thiamine administration was associated with a reduced time to lactate clearance in septic shock. Thiamine was associated with an improved likelihood of lactate clearance (subdistribution hazard ratio, 1.307; 95% CI, 1.002-1.704). Thiamine administration was also associated with a reduction in 28-day mortality (hazard ratio, 0.666; 95% CI, 0.490-0.905). The study itself may not be huge, but the results seem difficult to ignore.