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Vitamin D improves survival in Covid-19 elderly patients

sciencedirect.com

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Re: Vitamin D improves survival in Covid-19 elderly patients

#31

Post by rriepe »

Hallucinaut wrote: post #15
13415 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vitamin D can be bought without prescription and there is currently no shortage, so why should a country (government) distribute it? Anyone who wants some can buy some. Handing out free Vitamin D is like handing out free gym passes. It's not bad, but also not really a government's responsibility except for cases when people would benefit a lot but could not afford it at all.

Same reason governments filter the water or remove lead from paint; just because knowledge is available doesn't mean all citizens can and will act on it, and sometimes lowering the barrier is all that's needed. Moreover, I'd argue older generations in particular are more susceptible to believing what the doctor says. Just having the research available and the vitamins on the shelf isn't going to have nearly the same…

I think most places add it to milk. I supplement during the darkest six weeks of the year (which is starting very soon). It does seem like there could be a bigger seasonal push. Maybe not from the government but from somewhere.

Re: Vitamin D improves survival in Covid-19 elderly patients

#32

Post by [deleted] »

Angostura wrote: post #27
Hallucinaut wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same reason governments filter the water or remove lead from paint; just because knowledge is available doesn't mean all citizens can and will act on it, and sometimes lowering the barrier is all that's needed. Moreover, I'd argue older generations in particular are more susceptible to believing what the doctor says. Just having the research available and the vitamins on the shelf isn't going to have nearly the same…

Vitamin D is the only supplement that the NHS suggests that most people should take as a matter of course. But the logistics of getting it out to everyone would be tough. Easier to recommend it and let people buy it.

[deleted]

Re: Vitamin D improves survival in Covid-19 elderly patients

#33

Post by drilldrive »

floatingatoll wrote: post #13
pulse7 wrote: post #2

I am curious to know why countries didn't buy large quantities of vitamin D and distribute them to all people? Wouldn't that be cheaper and more effective than complete lockdowns, full hospitals, etc.?

In a similar instance where one country (the United States) realized that distributing a specific medicine widely to all citizens would vastly improve public health, they discovered that — just as with anti-vaxxers/maskers — people will attribute medical issues that are outside of their control and have no known cause to something that is in their control, whether or not it's related. "In the past five years, 74 citi…

I wouldn't trust anything a dentist has to offer, they only had their first empirical dentistry journal in the last decade.

Re: Vitamin D improves survival in Covid-19 elderly patients

#35

Post by hannob »

scythe wrote: post #23
hannob wrote: post #8

The headline here (HN) is not the one of the source. It's also not what the study says.

The study says: >Bolus vitamin D3 supplementation during or just before COVID-19 was associated with better survival rate in frail elderly. That's rather close to the headline.

No. The HN headline implies causation. The study result does not. (The study authors try to imply causation as well, but that's not what the study says.)

Re: Vitamin D improves survival in Covid-19 elderly patients

#37

Post by im3w1l »

pulse7 wrote: post #2

I am curious to know why countries didn't buy large quantities of vitamin D and distribute them to all people? Wouldn't that be cheaper and more effective than complete lockdowns, full hospitals, etc.?

Maybe the easiest way to get vitamin d out there would be to politely ask manufacturers to fortify butter.

Re: Vitamin D improves survival in Covid-19 elderly patients

#38

Post by scott_s »

The current discussion here seems to be about Vitamin D in general, and ignoring the study itself.

In my reading, this study is weak evidence. This was not a randomized, controlled trial, but historical analyses of a natural experiment. In itself, that's not a problem: we can learn a lot from natural experiments. But I don't think this instance is much of an "experiment."

As I understand it, all of the residents (96 in total) of a particular nursing home receive regular Vitamin D supplementation. Of the total residents, 66 got COVID-19. Among that group, they realized that 57 of them had received their Vitamin D supplementation either within a week of being diagnosed with COVID-19, or one month prior. That is the intervention group. The remaining 9 people are the "comparator" group. They found the intervention group had better survivability.

The main three reasons I consider this study weak evidence is that the number of people in the "comparator" group is very small (9!), and they - as far as I can tell - do not explain why these people did not receive their normal Vitamin D supplementation. The "comparator" group is supposed to have had a similar baseline, but there's still, to me, a strong possibility of a confounding factor. Finally, there were four total interventions: corticosteroids, hydroxychloroquine, "dedicated antibiotics" and the observation about Vitamin D. The more things you try, the less surprising it should be that there is a correlation along one of them.

Re: Vitamin D improves survival in Covid-19 elderly patients

#39

Post by scott_s »

hannob wrote: post #35
scythe wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The study says: >Bolus vitamin D3 supplementation during or just before COVID-19 was associated with better survival rate in frail elderly. That's rather close to the headline.

No. The HN headline implies causation. The study result does not. (The study authors try to imply causation as well, but that's not what the study says.)

Agreed. To support what you said: the phrase "was associated with" is not a causative claim. You cannot go from that phrase to "improves."

Re: Vitamin D improves survival in Covid-19 elderly patients

#40

Post by lez »

woj-tek wrote: post #30

Friendly reminder: vitamin D3 can affect sleep if taken later in a day. I tend to skip if I forget to take it before noon. Also, D3 without additional K2 may lead to calcium excess.

One more friendly reminder: If Vitamin D dosage is above 4000IU, same amount of Vitamin A should also be supplemented to avoid Vitamin A deficiency (e.g. eat liver). It's also antiviral, so it sounds like a good idea anyway.

More from doctors successfully treating covid with vitamins: https://youtu.be/LwlTQ52Wdro

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