Localized infections are surprisingly common. Because there are a variety types with a variety of causes there are many different common names. These include abscesses, boils, carbuncles, insect bites, snake bites, animal bites, and other infected wounds. Before the discovery of antibiotics, these conditions were life threatening and commonly caused death by blood poisoning.

Even with antibiotics, these infections are often painful, debilitating, and can take weeks or even months to heal. There is a need for treatments that will reduce the duration and severity of the infection and speed wound healing. Vitamin injections are highly likely to prove to be very useful for exactly this purpose.

High doses of vitamin C, niacin, and vitamin D are known to help the body fight off infections. Read more here. High doses of vitamin C and niacin are known to accelerate wound healing. Read more here, here, here and here.

Localized infections are a local problem, and don’t require delivery of high concentrations of vitamins throughout the body. They only require high doses of vitamins at the site of the wound. Taken by mouth or by I.V. injection, vitamin C and niacin commonly cause uncomfortable side effects. Injection by syringe at the site of the infection achieves maximum benefits with minimal side effects.

The usefulness of injecting vitamins at the site of infected wounds has not been proven with double blind placebo controlled clinical trials, and there is very little clinical experience. Fortunately, the safety of vitamin injections is proven because of extensive experience with I.V. injections for other purposes. Since the scientific case is strong, the risks are very low, and the cost is almost negligible, there is no need for expensive and time-consuming clinical trials. If the usefulness of treating local infections with oral antibiotics and local vitamins injections isn’t obviously better than oral antibiotics alone, then there isn’t much incentive to add the vitamin injections. Primary care physicians at research hospitals can easily conduct their own trials by adding vitamin injections to the treatment of half their patients presenting with localized infections. Either the average duration and severity of infections drops at least in half by using vitamin injections or it doesn’t.

The debate is over. Doses of vitamins far above the RDA have been proven useful for a handful of conditions using double blind clinical trials. Usefulness has been confirmed in clinical practice in the field. Optimal use of vitamins is complex. Most vitamins are available as a variety of specific molecules and each molecule can be delivered by mouth, through the skin, through the lungs by inhalation, by I.V. injection, and to a local spot by syringe injection. It is past time for primary care physicians to become experts in the safety and efficacy of vitamin supplements and to put them to work for the benefit of their patients. Syringe injections of vitamin C and niacin at the site of local infections is a good place to start.