I understand. I meant "bit different" in the nuanced context of this study. As the authors note in their introduction of the paper [1]: "Regrettably, these studies used ascorbic acid, a compound associated with the induction of metabolic acidosis and acidemia [15]. This makes it uncertain whether the unclear effects in human sepsis were due to the administration of a suboptimal preparation of the study medication. In contrast, sodium ascorbate (NaAscorbate) has a physiological pH, does not contribute to acidosis, can be given at a much greater dose, and may carry a different efficacy profile."
Yeah to try to maybe draw an analogy, NaAscorbate vs Ascorbic Acid is a bit like CSV vs JSON encoding - you might be sending the exact same data but if the serialisation format isn't what the API expects, then you could get errors but that doesn't necessarily mean that you sent the wrong data.
The body can react differently to salt vs pure form for the same active ingredient - eg crack vs cocaine
