The Role of Vitamin A in Reducing Death Rates from Measles to <0.01%

Could Vitamin A Be the Key to Beating Measles? 

Join Dr. Ryan Partovi on The Partovi Effect as he reveals groundbreaking insights into how vitamin A drastically reduces the mortality and complications associated with measles. This episode challenges widely held beliefs and sheds light on a simple yet effective treatment that could save lives.

• Significant Impact: Learn how high-dose vitamin A reduces measles death rates by up to 90% in young children, transforming a deadly disease into a manageable one.
• Comprehensive Benefits: Explore how vitamin A not only decreases the severity of measles but also shortens the duration of associated symptoms like pneumonia and diarrhea.
• Nutritional Influence: Understand why nutritional status is crucial, as vitamin A sufficiency can turn a dangerous infection into a less harmful encounter.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Facts on Vitamin A
• 2:09 Vitamin A's Impact on Measles Mortality
• 6:13 Nutrition and Measles Outcomes

Transcript

The Role of Vitamin A in reducing death rates from measles to <0.01%

[00:00:00] Mrs. Madi Partovi: Welcome to this episode of The Partovi Effect. My name is Mrs. Madi Partovi. 

[00:00:05] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: And I'm Dr. Ryan Partovi. So looking at the role of vitamin A, which I've been really excited to get to, but we had to put it here at the end just so that we can kind of create the groundwork.

[00:00:14] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: Right? So vitamin A deficiency in measles, a crucial factor in measles severity is the nutritional status of the patient, particularly their vitamin A levels. So vitamin A, not beta carotene, but retinol. Retinol is the active animal form of vitamin A. It's not available in vegetarian form. Sorry, vegetarians and vegans.

[00:00:36] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: Retinol. Retinol is what you need here. It's the animal form. You can, top yourself off on beta carotene as a preventive. Fine. In fact, they do. They have that engineered. For those who remember when we were kids growing up, you heard about genetic engineering and how it was going to create rice that was yellow because it had beta carotene put into it.

[00:00:56] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: And you know why they were doing that? To the reduce the risk of death [00:01:00] from measles. Okay. So let's keep going, but so you can do that as a preventative when you actually have measles, you need to be using the real stuff, retinol essential for immune function, maintaining healthy epithelial tissues, as we know.

[00:01:14] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: Really important for respiratory tract, eyes skin, et cetera. So measles infection is known to depress vitamin A levels. Children who are deficient in vitamin A have a much higher risk of severe complications, such as blindness, diarrhea, and pneumonia during measles. In areas of malnutrition, vitamin A deficiency was a major driver of measles mortality.

[00:01:34] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: This connection was first observed decades ago, reports as early as the 1930s. Suggested vitamin A could reduce measles deaths and has been abundantly confirmed by modern studies. Supplementation drastically reduces mortality. 

[00:01:49] Mrs. Madi Partovi: Can I ask you, do you think they, when that child was in the hospital, do you think they'd Gave that child, I have no vitamin A.

[00:01:59] Mrs. Madi Partovi: I have 

[00:01:59] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: no [00:02:00] idea. I hope so. But I will tell you that in my experience, vitamin therapy and hospitals are not two things that go together. Okay. 

[00:02:09] Vitamin A's Impact on Measles Mortality

[00:02:09] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: Multiple clinical trials and reviews have shown that administering high dose vitamin A to children with measles significantly reduces morbidity and mortality.

[00:02:19] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: They did a landmark control trial in Africa in the 80s. They showed a 50 percent reduction in measles mortality with just two doses of high dose vitamin A therapy. Subsequent trials in different countries showed similar or even greater life saving effects. A 2017 Cochrane Systematic Review, which is the gold standard in scientific medical research.

[00:02:43] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: The Cochrane Systematic Reviews, which pools the results of all of the studies and says, okay, what are the results? What are the overall results show? Concluded that two doses of vitamin A, 200, 000 I use each given on consecutive days are [00:03:00] associated with approximately an 80 to 90 percent reduction in the risk of death and acute measles for young children in the hospital.

[00:03:06] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: I will tell you that when our kids get sick with any kind of febrile illness, any kind of fever. Guess what they get? They get 100, 000 IUs of vitamin A. on day one, another 100, 000 I use of vitamin A on day two, just in case, even though they're already taking a multi that's got vitamin A in it, and they have a diet which is really nutritious and full of, beta carotene and other carotene, carotenes and carotenoids and probably vitamin A as well, although we don't do a whole lot of liver.

[00:03:34] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: But look, the fact of the matter is that This is something that as naturopathic physicians, we are taught. It's like, why not go ahead and give, you don't even know what the illness is yet, but just top them off on vitamin A just to be on the safe side. And certainly I would tell you that. In my view ask me again about the person that, you know, when we're done with this and I think I'll have made the case.

[00:03:58] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: Two doses of vitamin A, [00:04:00] 80 to 90 percent reduction in risk of death in acute measles cases for young children in hospital. Specifically in three randomized trials of hospitalized measles patients, vitamin A treatment led to a 64 percent drop in mortality compared to controls. When focusing on trials.

[00:04:18] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: And so these are in hospitalized patients, people that are already super ultra sick, not just in general, like if we were to be giving them vitamin a, early on in the illness, but like once they're already basically, they're in the hospital, they're, getting intensive treatment because they're already really sick from measles.

[00:04:38] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: Even then we give this two doses of vitamin a reduces the risk of death at that point by 64%. Okay. 

[00:04:46] Mrs. Madi Partovi: Great. A titch slower. 

[00:04:48] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: Sure. So when focusing on trials using water based Vitamin A formulations, which is kind of interesting because vitamin A is [00:05:00] usually thought of as being absorbable via fat, but probably if you create a water based one, it's going to be even better absorbed.

[00:05:08] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: There was an 81 percent reduction in death risk. So the effect was most pronounced in infants and toddlers, so children under the age of two years had an 83 percent lower chance of dying if treated with vitamin A versus not treated. These are enormous reductions. I love how it says these are enormous reductions.

[00:05:27] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: Effectively, vitamin A therapy can save the lives of most measles patients who might otherwise not survive. And I would add to that, that the rate that it's going to be saving them goes up for every day earlier that they get that vitamin A. Vitamin A right when first symptoms come much more protective than vitamin A once they're already in the hospital.

[00:05:51] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: And that's what we see based on the data. Even in cases of severe measles pneumonia, Which again is really what's killing these people that do get [00:06:00] it. Vitamin A supplementation shortened illness duration and lowered complication rates. Okay, this is looking at Vitamin A for treating measles in children is the name of that study.

[00:06:10] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: Zero, near zero mortality with sufficient nutrition. 

[00:06:13] Nutrition and Measles Outcomes

[00:06:13] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: The flip side of this findings is in populations where children are well nourished and not vitamin A deficient, measles mortality is naturally extremely low. Trials that gave vitamin A in communities with adequate nutrition saw little difference.

[00:06:27] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: Simply because baseline measles outcomes were already great. For example, studies in which the average child had normal vitamin A status. and they measured it in the blood and measles case fatality rate was under six percent showed no significant further reduction in mortality with supplemental vitamin a because there were really were very few deaths occurring in either group so that suggests that maintaining adequate vitamin a Preemptively brings measles fatality down to near zero in most cases, which aligns with what was observed in [00:07:00] developed countries by the mid 20th century.

[00:07:02] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: In practice, the W. H. O. And C. D. C. Strongly recommend high dose vitamin A for any child hospitalized with measles or in regions where malnutrition is common precisely because it can make the difference between life and death. UNICEF and WHO vitamin A programs have been credited with substantially lowering measles death rates in resource poor countries.

[00:07:23] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: So if you're in international public health, you already know this. Half, one review noted that half of global measles deaths occur in areas of Africa where high rates of malnutrition. So Measles mortality is not primarily about the virus. It's about the host's nutritional state. I'm going to read that again.

[00:07:44] Mrs. Madi Partovi: Yes, can you read that again? 

[00:07:45] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: Yeah. Measles mortality, dying from measles, is not primarily about the virus. It's about the host's nutritional state. Okay? With vitamin A repletion and proper care, even [00:08:00] acute measles in a child is rarely fatal. Indeed, taken together, the evidence implies that if a child receives sufficient vitamin A and medical attention, the risks of measles mortality approaches zero in otherwise healthy children.

[00:08:13] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: Which, I'm going to tell you, for CHAT GPT is a really strong statement. Okay. And then beyond mortality, so a lot, beyond looking at the death rate, vitamin A also lessens measles complications. Supplemented children experience shorter durations of pneumonia and diarrhea during measles. There's a well documented link between measles and child blindness in developing countries, largely because Vitamin A deficiency coupled with measles can cause corneal ulcers, but if you supplement, you prevent that complication.

[00:08:41] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: Overall, the vitamin A studies demonstrate measles is a vastly different disease in vitamin replete children, which means children that are topped off on vitamins. Versus a deficient child. This echoes the theme that measles danger has been overblown. In context where nutrition and healthcare are sufficient [00:09:00] in a well-nourished population.

[00:09:01] Dr. Ryan Partovi, JD, NMD, MIFHI: A case of measles, while unpleasant is very unlikely to cause lasting harm, whereas in a CH vitamin A deficient population, measles can be devastating. Nutrition therefore, is a key independent variable, often missing from alarmist narratives about measles Once again, I've been Dr. Ryan Partovi. I am Dr. Ryan Partovi, and I will continue hopefully to be God willing, Dr. Ryan Partovi.

[00:09:24] Mrs. Madi Partovi: And again, I am Mrs. Madi Partovi, and this is the Partovi Effect, creating the consensus.