Researchers in Spain have discovered that 82% of hospitalized patients with Covid-19 were vitamin D deficient in a new study published today. They studied levels of the vitamin in 216 patients admitted to the hospital for Covid-19 treatment in March this year, finding that 8 in 10 patients were considered clinically deficient.<\/p>\n
The work published today in\u00a0The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism<\/em><\/a>\u00a0also looked at a control group of 197 people who lived in the same geographical area and were similar to the Covid-19 patient group in age and sex. Among these people, 47% were vitamin D deficient.<\/p>\n However, it is important to point out that the conclusions of this study are correlative, not causative – meaning that it can\u2019t be concluded from this work that vitamin D deficiency was directly responsible for a higher chance of being hospitalized with Covid-19.<\/p>\n Vitamin D is essential for bone health, but is also thought to have\u00a0beneficial effects on the immune system<\/a>\u00a0too with some evidence that having sufficient vitamin D may give some protection against respiratory tract infections. Despite its importance, vitamin D deficiency is common, with\u00a0one study<\/a>\u00a0from 2011 estimating that 41.6% of U.S. adults are deficient. This number varies greatly depending on race with 82.1% of Black Americans being deficient and 69.2% of Hispanic Americans.<\/p>\n Vitamin D can be produced naturally by exposure to sunlight and found in\u00a0some foods<\/a>, including oily fish, eggs and fortified milk and plant-based milk substitutes.<\/p>\n The Spanish research is not alone in suggesting that vitamin D might be beneficial in protecting hospitalized individuals from adverse outcomes. Last month,\u00a0a study from researchers in Boston<\/a>\u00a0found that patients over 40 were over 50% less likely to die from the infection if they had sufficient levels of vitamin D. However, the more recent study from Spain wasn\u2019t able to conclude any link between vitamin D deficiency and severity of disease. So the information regarding any benefit of vitamin D for Covid-19 is still a bit inconclusive.<\/p>\n In certain parts of the world, especially where sunlight hours are limited during winter, vitamin D supplementation is routinely recommended by physicians. So, should everyone start taking vitamin D now even if it isn\u2019t clear whether it might help with Covid-19? Well, not necessarily. It is important to note that too much vitamin D\u00a0can be toxic<\/a>\u00a0and it can also interact with certain medications. So, if in any doubt, check with your doctor about whether it is recommended and safe to take vitamin D supplements.<\/p>\n Victoria Foster, Contributor, Forbes, INC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Researchers in Spain have discovered that 82% of hospitalized patients with Covid-19 were vitamin D deficient in a new study published today. They studied levels of the vitamin in 216 patients admitted to the hospital for Covid-19 treatment in March this year, finding that 8 in 10 patients were considered clinically deficient. The work published […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[38,1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetanclub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1735"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetanclub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetanclub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetanclub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetanclub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1735"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thetanclub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2612,"href":"https:\/\/thetanclub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1735\/revisions\/2612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetanclub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetanclub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetanclub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}