COVID-19 May Be Reduced By Vitamin D Supplementation

Higher levels of vitamin D may lower the risk of COVID-19 infection, mostly among Black people.

Higher levels of vitamin D may lower the risk of COVID-19 infection, mostly among Black people, as per a study at the University of Chicago Medical Center, published in the journal JAMA Open Network.

The study team retrospectively examined the data from over 3,000 patients at UChicago Medicine to derive the relationship between vitamin D levels and COVID-19. It was found that Black individuals who had levels of 30 to 40 ng/ml had a 2.64 times higher risk of testing positive for COVID-19 than people with levels of 40 ng/ml or greater.

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‘Higher levels of vitamin D may lower the risk of COVID-19 infection, mostly among Black people. However, determining exactly how vitamin D may be supporting immune function is a challenge posed to the present study. Hence further evidence is required to introduce the efficacy of dietary vitamin D in the prevention of COVID-19. ’

Also, the COVID-19 risk was not found in white people. The research team is now recruiting participants for two separate clinical trials testing the efficacy of vitamin D supplements for preventing COVID-19.

The study thereby showed that individuals with a vitamin D deficiency had a 7.2% chance of testing positive for the virus. Another study supported the evidence that 80% of patients who were diagnosed with COVID-19 were found to be vitamin D deficient.

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"There's a lot of literature on vitamin D. Most of it has been focused on bone health, which is where the current standards for sufficient vitamin D levels come from. But there's also some evidence that vitamin D might improve immune function and decrease inflammation. So far, the data has been relatively inconclusive. Based on these results, we think that earlier studies may have given doses that were too low to have much of an effect on the immune system, even if they were sufficient for bone health. It may be that different levels of vitamin D are adequate for different functions", says David Meltzer, MD, PhD, Chief of Hospital Medicine at UChicago Medicine and lead author of the study.

Vitamin D can be obtained through diet or supplements, or produced by the body in response to the exposure of the skin to sunlight. However roughly half of the world's population have vitamin D levels below 30ng/ml.

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While vitamin D supplements are relatively safe to take, excessive consumption of vitamin D supplements is associated with hypercalcemia, a condition in which calcium builds up in the bloodstream and causes nausea, vomiting, weakness, and frequent urination. If left unchecked, it can further lead to bone pain and kidney stones.

"Currently, the adult recommended dietary allowance for vitamin D is 600 to 800 international units (IUs) per day. The National Academy of Medicine has said that taking up to 4,000 IUs per day is safe for the vast majority of people and the risk of hypercalcemia increases at levels over 10,000 IUs per day. This is an observational study. We can see that there's an association between vitamin D levels and the likelihood of a COVID-19 diagnosis, but we don't know exactly why that is, or whether these results are due to the vitamin D directly or other related biological factors", says Meltzer.

However determining exactly how vitamin D may be supporting immune function is a challenge posed to the present study. Hence further evidence is required to introduce the efficacy of dietary vitamin D in the prevention of COVID-19.

Source-Medindia