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I would have to look it up but there were studies finding that a vitamin D deficiency correlated with a higher risk of developing severe cases of Covid-19.

If there is a causal relationship (i.e. better vitamin D levels will reduce the risk) or if this is because of a confounding factor is not known, as far as I know. A confounding factor could e.g. be a more healthy lifestyle in general. Running outdoors will expose people to more sunlight which leads to more vitamin D production - while couch potatoes with an unhealthy lifestyle would get less sunlight and lower vitamin D levels. In this case, supplementing vitamin D might have little to no effect - because all it would do is raising the vitamin D levels while the person still would have bad health because of their lifestyle.

Here's a simple search for these keywords: https://www.bing.com/search?q=covid+19+severity+vitamin+d




Here's a link to the study [1]. It is a randomized trial so there's clear evidence that there is a causational link. Specifically, Vitamin D reduces the risk of needing ICU treatment.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096007602...


As background, because healthy people tend to get out more there's always going to be a correlation between health and vitamin D levels. That means that most media articles gushing about a new vitamin D to health link are almost always worth ignoring. However, in the case of the Covid-19/vitamin D negative correlation it was much bigger than you'd expect by that route. Then someone actually did a randomized controlled trial and found a protective effect.


We can deal with this issue by running a randomized trial. Here's a link to a randomized trial [1] that establishes a clear causational relationship between Vitamin D and reduced admittance into the ICU.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096007602...


I think in that case it was still a beneficial affect due to the marginal person in the study having a vitamin d deficiency and thus diminished immune response. Give them a proper dose of vitamin d and their immune system rebounds and pretty rapidly.


It's funny how we're only getting this Vitamin D info just now.

Do you know when FearDept first mentioned it on their Twitter account?

2020-04-09.

https://threader.app/thread/1248430652409569287

https://twitter.com/@FearDept/status/1248430652409569287




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