Some research reported in the Mail and other newspapers has suggested that there’s a link between having low levels of vitamin D and dying from coronavirus.
It comes as official bodies including the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) are reviewing the role of Vitamin D in the context of respiratory infections and coronavirus.
This new research, led by Dr Prabowo Raharusuna, looked at 780 people in Indonesia with confirmed Covid-19 infection and their levels of vitamin D.
The study found that the risk of death was highest in people who were older, male and who had pre-existing health conditions, and who also had below normal vitamin D levels. The first three of those factors are already well known to affect your risk of dying from coronavirus. It could be that these people were more likely to die because of their age, gender, or health, but the researchers said that they took those factors into account and found that having low vitamin D levels is strongly associated with risk of dying from Covid-19.
What were the results?
Most of the patients in the study who died were people with an existing condition – it’s not clear from the study what these conditions were. The majority of people who were classed as either “vitamin D deficient” or “vitamin D insufficient” (this means levels that are low but not classed as a deficiency) had pre-existing conditions. Only 18.8% of cases with normal vitamin D levels had pre-existing conditions.
The research found that compared with normal levels, people with insufficient vitamin D were approximately 13 times more likely to die from the virus, while people who were vitamin D deficient were about 19 times more likely to die.
How good was the research?