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Vitamin D deficiency and Covid-19 mortality [pdf]

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Re: Vitamin D deficiency and Covid-19 mortality [pdf]

#21

Post by troupe »

emdowling wrote: post #3

This conclusion (10x higher mortality if deficient in Vitamin D) is rather significant. How trustworthy is this source?

Keep in mind that they aren't saying that their data doesn't say that people not given vitamin D supplements were 10x more likely to die. Instead that people coming in with a deficiency already were 10x more likely to die. Imagine if you had two groups. Group A runs for 1 hour a day outside. The group B is confined to their beds in a nursing home.

Group B is going to have a vitamin D deficiency compared to group A. Group A is also much more likely to survive Covid. However, this wouldn't give you any evidence that vitamin D is the cause of better survival rates. You should assume that it might just be an indicator of better health over all unless you can find some way to control for all the other health factors.

Re: Vitamin D deficiency and Covid-19 mortality [pdf]

#22

Post by tekgnos »

It is not surprising at all that Covid-19 matches what we already know about Vitamin D and Influenza. There are consequences for radically altering the environment in which humans evolved. We were nude outdoors and now we are clothed and indoors. When we do briefly go outside, we are all conditioned to slather on sunscreen, which blocks all Vitamin D generation.

Why do people tend to get sick in the wintertime and not the summer?

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16959053/

Re: Vitamin D deficiency and Covid-19 mortality [pdf]

#23

Post by James_Henry »

xutopia wrote: post #11
ve55 wrote: post #2

Although this is a notable finding it's important to remember that it doesn't lead to the conclusion that supplementing vitamin D will be very beneficial here. When vitamin D is produced in the body naturally via exposure to sunlight there's a huge amount of other things that occur as well, and we don't have a ton of good science to back up if curing a vitamin D deficiency via supplementation of pure vitamin D is rea…

The study showed that supplementing (though it was injection) to between "45 and 55 ng/ml" is "useful not only in prevention but also in acute cases". So yes... sunlight does probably way more benefits for us but supplementation if you are deficient is still showing significant effects.

Just to be clear, the study that you are quoting isn't about Sars-Cov 2. This is a quote from a 2016 paper on other respiratory diseases.

Re: Vitamin D deficiency and Covid-19 mortality [pdf]

#24

Post by dlojudice »

"Pending results of such trials, it would seem uncontroversial to enthusiastically promote efforts to achieve reference nutrient intakes of vitamin D, which range from 400 IU/day in the UK to 600–800 IU/day in the USA. These are predicated on benefits of vitamin D for bone and muscle health, but there is a chance that their implementation might also reduce the impact of COVID-19 in populations where vitamin D deficiency is prevalent; there is nothing to lose from their implementation, and potentially much to gain."

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8...

Re: Vitamin D deficiency and Covid-19 mortality [pdf]

#25

Post by ve55 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #13
ve55 wrote: post #2

Although this is a notable finding it's important to remember that it doesn't lead to the conclusion that supplementing vitamin D will be very beneficial here. When vitamin D is produced in the body naturally via exposure to sunlight there's a huge amount of other things that occur as well, and we don't have a ton of good science to back up if curing a vitamin D deficiency via supplementation of pure vitamin D is rea…

Technically true, but you should still eat vitamin D supplements. It's very cheap and safe, so worst case it has less effect than you hope. You can overdose, but you have to really crazy with the dosage. Also 1: Vitamin D supplements do cure rickets. Also 2: All of us who eat supplements should show up in the stats as high in vitamin D, so the data does partially cover that case.

Yeah, agree completely. I still take Vitamin D daily, and its among my cheapest supplements, I think somewhere around 3 cents per day.

Re: Vitamin D deficiency and Covid-19 mortality [pdf]

#26

Post by ve55 »

graeme wrote: post #9
ve55 wrote: post #2

Although this is a notable finding it's important to remember that it doesn't lead to the conclusion that supplementing vitamin D will be very beneficial here. When vitamin D is produced in the body naturally via exposure to sunlight there's a huge amount of other things that occur as well, and we don't have a ton of good science to back up if curing a vitamin D deficiency via supplementation of pure vitamin D is rea…

What about this section of the pdf? From a 2016 study on patients with other respiratory diseases. —————- High dose vitamin D administration in ventilated intensive care unit patients: A pilot double blind randomized controlled trial In the study, patients with vitamin D deficiency ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221462371... —————— Ah, the pdf has a second such study. Mortality almost half less…

I haven't seen that one, that looks pretty impressive, especially for administering it in a single dose that is that large. That's definitely a good data point in favor that some of it is direct causation though.

Re: Vitamin D deficiency and Covid-19 mortality [pdf]

#27

Post by m463 »

et2o wrote: post #5

Vitamin D has been endlessly promoted as a treatment for many diseases due to evidence from observational studies, but hundreds of millions of dollars in randomized controlled trials have never demonstrated it to be effective for any disease except rickets. There was just a large trial published in JAMA [1] examining its effectiveness for depression given solid observational data. It was not at all effective. The rea…

Although there is no proof that things like vitamin D are a cause of something, I think it might be useful to treat them as biomarkers.

(basically saying they correlate, without leaping onto the cause bandwagon)

Re: Vitamin D deficiency and Covid-19 mortality [pdf]

#28

Post by d_burfoot »

et2o wrote: post #5

Vitamin D has been endlessly promoted as a treatment for many diseases due to evidence from observational studies, but hundreds of millions of dollars in randomized controlled trials have never demonstrated it to be effective for any disease except rickets. There was just a large trial published in JAMA [1] examining its effectiveness for depression given solid observational data. It was not at all effective. The rea…

My view is that sunlight is the confounding effect. Getting substantial exposure to the sun has many health benefits, probably including Covid resiliency, and also increases vitamin D levels in the blood. So vitamin D correlates with, but does not cause, those health benefits.

How is it even plausible that sunlight does not have significant health benefits, given that Europeans evolved to have pale skin because they lived in high latitude environments?

Re: Vitamin D deficiency and Covid-19 mortality [pdf]

#30

Post by newsbinator »

zzz61831 wrote: post #20
BurningFrog wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically true, but you should still eat vitamin D supplements. It's very cheap and safe, so worst case it has less effect than you hope. You can overdose, but you have to really crazy with the dosage. Also 1: Vitamin D supplements do cure rickets. Also 2: All of us who eat supplements should show up in the stats as high in vitamin D, so the data does partially cover that case.

It's not that safe, not like vitamin C safe. Especially not in doses sold in pills in pharmacies around the world.

I still can't figure out the safe + effective dosage of Vitamin D.

I was taking 1,000mg a day and that didn't seem to move the needle on my Vitamin D blood work.

In recent weeks I've been taking 4,000mg/day (with K2), which is 4x what I've had pharmacists recommend.

I plan to keep that up for a couple more weeks while I'm under quarantine (recently flew from a high-risk country to a less high-risk country). After that I'll level off to 2,000mg a day.

But I'm shooting in the dark. I have no idea if 2,000mg/day or 4,000mg/day is too much or not enough.

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