A preliminary study has found tentative evidence suggesting low levels of vitamin D may make it more likely an individual will die after contracting coronavirus.
The research compared average levels of vitamin D across 20 European countries with COVID-19 infection rate and mortality.
It revealed a convincing correlation where countries with low vitamin D levels were also the countries with highest mortality and COVID-19 infection rates.
The study has not yet been peer-reviewed and scrutinised by other scientists and is unable to prove vitamin D is the reason behind this link.
However, the scientists from Queen Elizabeth Hospital Foundation Trust and the University of East Anglia write in their study: ‘We believe, that we can advise Vitamin D supplementation to protect against SARS-CoV2 infection.’
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Scientists from Queen Elizabeth Hospital Foundation Trust and the University of East Anglia write in their study: ‘We believe, that we can advise Vitamin D supplementation to protect against SARS-CoV2 infection’
The study used pre-existing data on vitamin D levels, including from a comprehensive 2019 study led by Paul Lips, Professor Emeritus of internal medicine at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
This previous study collected comprehensive data on vitamin D levels of populations across Europe and the Middle East.
The study involved using the vitamin D measurements of thousands of individuals.
The latest study on the vitamin’s effectiveness against COVID-19 narrowed this data to 20 countries, to negate any interfering factors, such as a country’s latitude etc.
The average amount of vitamin D in serum samples was (56 nmol/l), with anything below 30nmol/l deemed ‘severely deficient’.
The latest study took the existing database of vitamin D levels and found worryingly low levels of vitamin D in the elderly, a demographic more at risk of dying after contracting the coronavirus.
‘[The study shows levels of] vitamin D of 26nmol/L in Spain, 28 nmol/L in Italy and 45 nmol/L in the Nordic countries, in older people,’ the researchers write.
‘In Switzerland, mean vitamin D levels are 23(nmol/L) in nursing homes and in Italy 76 per cent of women over 70 years of age have been found to have circulating levels below 30nmol/L.
‘These are countries with high number of cases of COVID–19 and the ageing people is the group with the highest risk for morbidity and mortality with SARS-Cov2.’
Vitamin D can make its way into the human body either through certain foods, such as fish and mushroom, or can be produced by skin cells when exposed to sunlight.
A simple statistical analysis, called a t-test, was then performed on the two sets of data to determine any relationship which unearthed the correlation between deaths and vitamin D levels.
‘The most vulnerable group of population for COVID-19 is also the one that was the most deficit in vitamin D,’ the researchers conclude in their preliminary report.
The study was published on pre-print site Research Square.
The latest study found vitamin D levels were lower in the elderly, a group that is known to be more at risk of dying after contracting the coronavirus. Pictured, an elderly man wears a protective mask at a nursing home in Artes, near Barcelona
It remains unknown why vitamin D may offer protection against infection by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and the subsequent development of COVID-19.
However, the study is backed up by previous research that was published before the emergence of the novel coronavirus.
Healthy vitamin D levels have been linked to reduced risk of other respiratory diseases, such as influenza, tuberculosis and childhood asthma.
Recently, skin cancer researcher Dr Rachel Neale said that having low levels of vitamin D can be fatal if one also has the coronavirus.
‘Now, more than ever, is not the time to be vitamin D deficient,’ Dr Neale told The Australian.
‘It would make sense that being vitamin D deficient would increase the risk of having symptomatic COVID-19 and potentially having worse symptoms. And that’s because vitamin D seems to have important effects on the immune system.’
Last year, Dr Neale found that people with low levels of vitamin D are almost twice as likely as those with high levels of vitamin D oto develop acute respiratory infections.
According to the study of 78,000 patients, people with vitamin D deficiencies were more likely to be sicker for longer.
Dr Neale said she sits in the Brisbane sun for for five to 10 minutes everyday to stimulate her body’s production of vitamin D.
She recommended Sydneysiders should get 10-15 minutes of midday sun while Melburnians should aim for a little longer due to the colder climate.