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Study of the effect of Vitamin D, Magnesium and Vitamin B12 on Covid-19 patients

medrxiv.org

11–20 of 266 posts

Re: Study of the effect of Vitamin D, Magnesium and Vitamin B12 on Covid-19 patients

#11
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N=43 (17 given vitamins vs 26 not) Highlights: "Significantly fewer DMB patients than controls required initiation of oxygen therapy subsequently throughout their hospitalization (17.6% vs 61.5%, P=0.006)." "DMB combination in older COVID-19 patients was associated with a significant reduction in proportion of patients with clinical deterioration requiring oxygen support and/or intensive care support. This study supp…

> Since taking a basic multi-vitamin is good anyway.... Could you elaborate on that? I thought that taking vitamin supplements without a recommendation from a doctor is just a way to have very expensive piss. Most of the things that get in, are removed from the body without being absorbed.

An ICU is more expensive than expensive piss

But sure, you could be extra sure that your Vit-D/Zinc/Mg (and other vitamins) levels are low by going to the doctor now, doing an exam and waiting for the results to come back.

Or you could go through your diet and estimate your nutritional intake and see if anything is missing (a lot of apps do that calculation)

Re: Study of the effect of Vitamin D, Magnesium and Vitamin B12 on Covid-19 patients

#12
post #4
post #2

N=43 (17 given vitamins vs 26 not) Highlights: "Significantly fewer DMB patients than controls required initiation of oxygen therapy subsequently throughout their hospitalization (17.6% vs 61.5%, P=0.006)." "DMB combination in older COVID-19 patients was associated with a significant reduction in proportion of patients with clinical deterioration requiring oxygen support and/or intensive care support. This study supp…

Despite my somewhat limited knowledge in biology, my intuition was telling me that the number of patients seems way too small to come to definitive conclusions. Mind you, if Vitamin-D, magnesium and B12 play a role, that's good news for me: I've been very strict about those 3 in the past 2 years(and coincidentally loaded up my magnesium stash yesterday).

The authors address the issue of small sample size in the Discusson section:

"This study was conducted under difficult dynamic circumstances and is thus limited by the small sample size, and the lack of systematic biologic measures to support its findings. It is however a proof-of-principle effort with very promising results. Our findings would need to be further validated in a well-designed randomized study."

Re: Study of the effect of Vitamin D, Magnesium and Vitamin B12 on Covid-19 patients

#13
post #3
post #2

N=43 (17 given vitamins vs 26 not) Highlights: "Significantly fewer DMB patients than controls required initiation of oxygen therapy subsequently throughout their hospitalization (17.6% vs 61.5%, P=0.006)." "DMB combination in older COVID-19 patients was associated with a significant reduction in proportion of patients with clinical deterioration requiring oxygen support and/or intensive care support. This study supp…

> Since taking a basic multi-vitamin is good anyway.... Could you elaborate on that? I thought that taking vitamin supplements without a recommendation from a doctor is just a way to have very expensive piss. Most of the things that get in, are removed from the body without being absorbed.

I agree, you don’t need a supplement. I get regular checkups. I’ve never had a deficiency in any vitamin except D.

Re: Study of the effect of Vitamin D, Magnesium and Vitamin B12 on Covid-19 patients

#14
post #9
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since taking a basic multi-vitamin is good anyway.... Could you elaborate on that? I thought that taking vitamin supplements without a recommendation from a doctor is just a way to have very expensive piss. Most of the things that get in, are removed from the body without being absorbed.

If you're deficient in something, your body probably up-regulates absorption. You can get higher quality vitamins with forms that are more easily absorbed, for example chelated magnesium instead of magnesium oxide. That said, I thought the evidence actually pointed to higher all cause mortality in people who take vitamins.

> I thought the evidence actually pointed to higher all cause mortality in people who take vitamins.

Citation absolutely needed

The caveat is excessive consumption of Vitamin A (and maybe others), in some specific circumstances. Keyword: excessive

Re: Study of the effect of Vitamin D, Magnesium and Vitamin B12 on Covid-19 patients

#15
The methodology mentions nothing about randomization so its unclear if there was any selection bias here.

If you look a table 2, the control group was on average 6 years older and had more co-morbidities. This suggests that there was some selection bias and that other undocumented factors could have greatly affected this experiment.

Doing multi-variate analysis with such a small sample size gives rise to huge uncertainties. In all, this study is only very weak evidence.

Re: Study of the effect of Vitamin D, Magnesium and Vitamin B12 on Covid-19 patients

#16
I wonder, when I see stories about studies about treating patients with basic nutrients and vitamins, if a root-cause to consider is that our standard diets are so deprived of essential vitamins and minerals that "treating" someone with what they have been missing causes the body to simply function the way it's supposed to. I haven't read the full study but if it takes into account what someone's diet was prior to this treatment as well as their vitamin and mineral levels (however that is measured) I think it would be more interesting to see how such a vitamin boost affects those who are vitamin starved versus those who were taking a "decent amount" of vitamins but where given a boost because of an illness. It just seems the more we learn in this field the more it shows us what we don't know.

Re: Study of the effect of Vitamin D, Magnesium and Vitamin B12 on Covid-19 patients

#17
post #9
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since taking a basic multi-vitamin is good anyway.... Could you elaborate on that? I thought that taking vitamin supplements without a recommendation from a doctor is just a way to have very expensive piss. Most of the things that get in, are removed from the body without being absorbed.

If you're deficient in something, your body probably up-regulates absorption. You can get higher quality vitamins with forms that are more easily absorbed, for example chelated magnesium instead of magnesium oxide. That said, I thought the evidence actually pointed to higher all cause mortality in people who take vitamins.

If you have a study that shows higher all cause mortality please link it.

My hypothesis would be that healthy people don't take vitamins because they never saw the need, putting already sick people in the second category. I doubt that taking vitamins can actually do much harm in low doses.

Re: Study of the effect of Vitamin D, Magnesium and Vitamin B12 on Covid-19 patients

#18
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since taking a basic multi-vitamin is good anyway.... Could you elaborate on that? I thought that taking vitamin supplements without a recommendation from a doctor is just a way to have very expensive piss. Most of the things that get in, are removed from the body without being absorbed.

An ICU is more expensive than expensive piss But sure, you could be extra sure that your Vit-D/Zinc/Mg (and other vitamins) levels are low by going to the doctor now, doing an exam and waiting for the results to come back. Or you could go through your diet and estimate your nutritional intake and see if anything is missing (a lot of apps do that calculation)

> ...and see if anything is missing

With the caveat that (word of mouth, not researched) the FDA recommendations on vitamin D are substantially too low.

Re: Study of the effect of Vitamin D, Magnesium and Vitamin B12 on Covid-19 patients

#19
post #16

I wonder, when I see stories about studies about treating patients with basic nutrients and vitamins, if a root-cause to consider is that our standard diets are so deprived of essential vitamins and minerals that "treating" someone with what they have been missing causes the body to simply function the way it's supposed to. I haven't read the full study but if it takes into account what someone's diet was prior to th…

You are right and it is no secret:

- 40% of US Americans are B12 deficient https://www.livekindly.co/b12-deficiency-genetic-makeup/#:~:....

- 42% are Vitamin D deficient: https://www.cantonmercy.org/healthchat/42-percent-of-america....

- up to 50% are Magnesium deficient: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180226122548.h...

- 10 - 20% of women are iron deficient: https://www.aafp.org/afp/2007/0301/p671.html#:~:text=The%20p....

My unscientific conclusion is that the vast majority of people world-wide probably suffer from at least one and probably more significant nutrient deficiency. With that we are wasting our "performance potential" and, less capitalistic, our "well-being potential". The lack of any of just those nutrients I looked up can cause anything from debilitating brain fog, over physical and mental deterioration to numerous physical ailments...

Yet for most of them, taking them in excess causes the exact same problem. If I was filthy rich I would get nutrient levels measured once a week. (-;

Re: Study of the effect of Vitamin D, Magnesium and Vitamin B12 on Covid-19 patients

#20
post #3
post #2

N=43 (17 given vitamins vs 26 not) Highlights: "Significantly fewer DMB patients than controls required initiation of oxygen therapy subsequently throughout their hospitalization (17.6% vs 61.5%, P=0.006)." "DMB combination in older COVID-19 patients was associated with a significant reduction in proportion of patients with clinical deterioration requiring oxygen support and/or intensive care support. This study supp…

> Since taking a basic multi-vitamin is good anyway.... Could you elaborate on that? I thought that taking vitamin supplements without a recommendation from a doctor is just a way to have very expensive piss. Most of the things that get in, are removed from the body without being absorbed.

I don't know what you count as very expensive. Here in the UK, daily multivitamins are like £3 for 100
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