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Factors associated with Covid-19 deaths in records of 17M adult NHS patients

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Re: Factors associated with Covid-19 deaths in records of 17M adult NHS patients

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This review found nothing, so they found ‘no clinical evidence on vitamin D in COVID-19.’ No evidence for and no evidence against. ‘We found no trials of vitamin D in COVID-19 that have reported results.’ ‘As our searches returned no relevant results, [...]’ But keep on posting the paper though.

I think that's a poor summary of the paper, here's the rest of the abstract: "There is some evidence that daily vitamin D3 supplementation over weeks to months may prevent other acute respiratory infections, particularly in people with low or very low vitamin D status. This evidence has limitations, including heterogeneity in study populations, interventions, and definitions of respiratory infections that include upp…

That doesn’t quite help the argument that there’s no connection, right?

Re: Factors associated with Covid-19 deaths in records of 17M adult NHS patients

#142
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK Asian == South Asian

Source? I've never got that impression as an English person. I consider it to be non-specific. However, if you're in a place like Southall or Bradford then the "Asian" people around you are indeed more likely to be south Asian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Asian

Re: Factors associated with Covid-19 deaths in records of 17M adult NHS patients

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> is only partially attributable to pre-existing clinical risk factors or deprivation I'd expect more it is attributable to less access to premium healthcare (remember, in the UK everyone gets healthcare, but not everyone gets privately-sponsored add-on healthcare)

Private healthcare providers in the UK don't seem to be providing hospital treatment for COVID-19 - this is left to the NHS, BUPA says: "As a public health emergency, COVID-19 is being treated through the public health system." https://www.bupa.co.uk/coronavirus/health-insurance Not that private healthcare providers are actually providing resources to the NHS so its possible that you could end up in a private hospita…

Currently private hospitals in England were requisitioned to cope with surge demand for NHS patients. They're going to reopen to private patients soonish.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52381675

Re: Factors associated with Covid-19 deaths in records of 17M adult NHS patients

#144

It’s not surprising that historically plague-ridden Europeans would be less susceptible to a new blight then other ethnicities. Disease resistance has been selected for.

Asia got all the same plagues as Europe

The two regions often responded very dissimilarly. nKyle Harper'sbThe Fate of Rome looks at this in depth.

TL:DR; civilisation's patterns (cities, trade, travel) co-evolve diseases. Populations tend to evolve resistance to local endemic disease, but are susceptible to novel agents, including foreign infections. Rome infected China and vice versa.

Re: Factors associated with Covid-19 deaths in records of 17M adult NHS patients

#145
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a vegan, I learned that there's D2 (comes from plants) and D3 (comes from animals), and they are the same as far as I know. Not sure about using them for treatments.

As a carnivore I’ve learned the same.

As an omnivore I didn’t know either of these things before now, so I thank my learned extreme-dieted colleagues for sharing.

Re: Factors associated with Covid-19 deaths in records of 17M adult NHS patients

#146
post #66

Obligatory, "Fucking Twitter thread" complaint. I dread reading - Bullet point - After bullet point - In the form of a tweet per bullet point - Trying to skip the bullshit - And find the conclusion (I'll stop now) ...and having the anxiety to be disappointed that I'll read so much bullshit and end up with nothing. Yes, in the end he links to the abstract which has the (unfortunately harder to parse) meat, but also ye…

I fully agree with you, and therefore: a) the thread, in readable form https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1258372975004389379.html b) the full publication https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.06.20092999v...

ProTip: DDG bang !thread

So:

  !thread  https://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/1258372975004389379
...at https://duckduckgo.com, or in your navbar (if DDG is your default search engine) goes straight there.

Re: Factors associated with Covid-19 deaths in records of 17M adult NHS patients

#147
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, evidence of absence is unlikely to be found as the vast majority of researchers tend not to bother publishing papers with negative results. So if an idea seems like it should have been researched already, but no research papers are to be found, it may very well be because the evidence of absence simply hasn't been shared.

I wonder how many papers give a negative result because p was found to be .049 or so. I'm recalling that thread here a while back debating whether the statistical critical value is too high.

.049 is a positive result with a threshold of .05 - lower numbers mean smaller chance of no relationship.

Re: Factors associated with Covid-19 deaths in records of 17M adult NHS patients

#148
post #35

I think one of the key takeaways is in the abstract: > People from Asian and black groups are at markedly increased risk of in-hospital death from COVID-19, and contrary to some prior speculation is only partially attributable to pre-existing clinical risk factors or deprivation

It seems pretty remarkable that men have a hazard factor 2x that of women as well.

Women have a more "advanced" immune system, since many of the genes involved in the immune system are located on the X chromosome. The downside of this is that women are also more at risk of auto-immune disease.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nri2815?proof=true

Re: Factors associated with Covid-19 deaths in records of 17M adult NHS patients

#149
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case you weren't aware, controlled trials have shown that vitamin d supplementation protects against respiratory disease [1]. This is evidence that the association you highlight is more than a spurious correlation. It's likely to be causal. [1] https://www.bmj.com/content/356/bmj.i6583

A friend of mine had cancer and they had him taking D3 immediately. also I was out shopping recently and they seemed to sell many varieties of D3, but I didn't see any other D vitamins offered for sale. Is D deficiency really D3 deficiency? or have the other D vitamins sold out?

> A friend of mine had cancer and they had him taking D3 immediately.

The last thing in the world a cancer patient needs is well nourished cancer cells, most grow and reproduce quickly.

Re: Factors associated with Covid-19 deaths in records of 17M adult NHS patients

#150
post #117

Here's a link to the paper: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.06.20092999v... This is interesting data. I want to see Vitamin D status included in a large population study like this because I've been following two smaller studies covering about a thousand cases total that shows Vitamin D deficiency has a risk ratio of 10 to 20 (more even than being age 80+ in the above study). The studies: [1] https://p…

> I want to see Vitamin D status included in a large population study like this Although vitamin D is not mentioned in this study, it does show that black people have a hazard ratio of about 2 compared to whites. In the UK black people would be more vitamin D deficient than white people. Now that I think about it, isn't the potential for vitamin D deficiency the reason there are white people in the first place?

> Now that I think about it, isn't the potential for vitamin D deficiency the reason there are white people in the first place?

Yes. Pale skin has better vitamin D production in low light, while black skin avoids skin damage even in extreme sunlight. Skin color is just evolution finding the right trade-off for the local climate.

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