A growing number of scientific studies show that vitamin D supplementation (not replacing vaccination) could help reduce SARSCoV-2 infection as well as the risk of severe forms of COVID-19, intensive care visits and death. Faced with this observation, a group of 73 experts (mostly university professors from different medical specialties) and 6 national learned societies gathered around du Pr Cedric annweiler, chief du service de Geriatrics at the CHU d‘Angers, and du Professor Jean-Claude Souberbielle, functional explorations department of the Necker-Enfants Malades hospital in Paris, call for supplementing the entire population with vitamin D, and not just those most at risk.
Together, they co-authored an article which has just been published in The Practitioner’s Review, in which they highlight the value of ensuring adequate vitamin D status in the general population, including healthy people of all ages, in the context of COVID-19. “In the absence of major risk related to supplementation at an appropriate dose and given that about half of the general French population has hypovitaminosis D, there is every reason today to supplement vitamin D throughout the year for people at risk, i.e. people aged 80 and over, or sick, or frail, or dependent, or obese, or living in an EHPAD, and the general population during the winter period. The goal is for the majority of the general population to achieve a serum 25(OH)D concentration of between 20 and 60 ng/mL.”
2 times more likely to have a severe form of Covid
Like ANSES reminded him during the first confinement, vitamin D plays an essential role in the quality of bone and muscle tissue as well as in strengthening our immune system. Last spring, a Northwestern University study, in the United States, in turn recalled the importance of this vitamin, suggesting that people who have a vitamin D deficiency are twice as likely to develop a severe form of Covid-19.
The research team assumed that the difference in the death rates of the different countries affected by covid-19 could not be explained solely by the age distribution in the population or the quality of the health systems. Looking at the statistical data, they then noted a correlation between the mortality rate and vitamin D deficiency. According to this study, vitamin D deficiency is also the cause of the famous “cytokine storm” which is has heard a lot about this disproportionate immune defense reaction which goes so far as to cause death in some patients with coronavirus.
“Our results suggest that vitamin D may reduce the severity of COVID-19 by suppressing cytokine storm in COVID-19 patients. But further research is needed to account for other factors through direct measurement of levels of vitamin D,” the scientists said.
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