19 ms·

SARS-CoV-2 positivity rates associated with circulating Vitamin D levels

308 points by spuz 6y ago

xiphias2 6y ago
Data availability got much better in the past following years (as a software engineer I can finally do modelling based on data published by medical researchers), but it's still too slow, which costs real lives. ,,Data underlying the study cannot be made publicly available due to ethical concerns about patient confidentiality'' I don't believe that any part of the data couldn't be made available (D-vitamin level - age - covid test results at least, even if location/time would be too sensitive to share). Not sharing any data has ethical concerns as well.
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  Wouldn't that expose more correlations that aren't proven to be causative?
  - viraptor 6y ago
    There's some weird correlation in everything. That's half the numerology. Various correlations can also be useful in meta analysis (if you find some trend across many studies you can run a test for it specifically). Not publishing the raw data just in case someone doesn't know how to interpret the data is not a solution to anything.
    - Izkata 6y ago
      > There's some weird correlation in everything. For anyone who hasn't seen it yet: http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
  - MiroF 6y ago
    > Wouldn't that expose more correlations that aren't proven to be causative? What is wrong with "exposing more correlations"? I don't get how that's an argument against data release.
- violetgarden 6y ago
  I agree! It seems like it could have been anonymized. The government site I check regarding covid news that is local to me has the person’s age, sex, test results, and county. I don’t see how vitamin d levels could be an identifier. Just venting - data during this pandemic has been one of the most frustrating parts for me. Data should be one of the tools we can use to get through this, but it’s been a struggle knowing what’s accurate and lack of certain information makes it hard to make good decisions.
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    One interesting thing is that the Russian vaccine tests were criticized for not sharing raw data by lots of researchers from western countries as well. I'm definately taking vitamin D and not signing up for the Russian vaccine, but it seemed hypocrytical to me that only Russian researchers were shamed for not being transparent.
    - hcknwscommenter 6y ago
      "One interesting thing is that the Russian vaccine tests were criticized for not sharing raw data" I'm sure that, if one searched hard enough, one could find such a criticism. However, most of the criticism centered around the fact that the vaccine was "approved" on the basis of nearly zero actual human data.
      - xiphias2 6y ago
        I saw only 1 open letter signed by lots of researchers which contained many problems with the experiment: the main one for me was that the results that were supposed to be from independent experiments were extremely highly correlated. The reason behind that correlation can be not enough original data (cheating) or bad processing, but the western researchers asked for the original data to find it out.
  - sroussey 6y ago
    Anonymizing patient data is quite difficult. Try a Google search: "reidentifying" patient data
- gridlockd 6y ago
  The really interesting data would be comorbidities that cause low Vitamin D. Those are (independent?) risk factors for severe COVID.
phkahler 6y ago
>> Until treatment and vaccine for coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) becomes widely available, other methods of reducing infection rates should be explored. Until we figure out how to profit, maybe we should let people use existing stuff so they dont die? Yeah, I woke up in a bad mood :-/
elil17 6y ago
Do any medical experts know, does this mean I should take a vitamin D pill?
- xchaotic 6y ago
  Not an expert at all but moderate dosage should have no side effects. Regular Overdose by 2000-3000% can have some long term negative effects.
- viraptor 6y ago
  Not an expert, but as usual, it depends. You may want to check your levels changing too because you can overdo it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D_toxicity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D_toxicity Talk to your doctor.
- radu_floricica 6y ago
  IANAD, but reasonable algorithm looks like: If you can test, test. Look online what normal levels should be - you'll find several options, pick the higher ones (look for Vitamin D Council for an upper bound recommendation) If you can't test or you test below optimum and you can sunbathe - do that. A lot. It's inherently safe as far as overdose goes. For skin cancer, it's usually worth the risk, and definitely worth it during the pandemic (unless you have specific reasons to think you're higher risk). If you can't test and can't sunbathe... in normal times I'd suggest to supplement except in summer. But in Covid times, I'd go with light supplementation during summer (<1000 UI daily) and higher dosage staring autumn (~2000 UI).
  - graeme 6y ago
    Note that not that much sun exposure is required. The dminder app is a good way to estimate update based on sunniness and percent skin exposed.
    - Larrikin 6y ago
      The replies from the developer to reviews makes me not want to support this dev. Any other good options?
MayeulC 6y ago
Hmm, could this relationship also somewhat explain the bigger incidence of respiratory viruses during winter, when sun shines less, and we produce less vitamin D?
- MichaelZuo 6y ago
  This is a possibility. Or at least it is a plausible mechanism of action for higher susceptibility. If true we should expect seasonal variance in prevalence to decrease as you move towards the equator.
  - gridlockd 6y ago
    There is in fact data that shows this correlation, I may post a source later.
    - londons_explore 6y ago
      It still isn't a strong indicator of causation, since nearly all seasonal climatic effects diminish towards the equator.
- hyko 6y ago
  It could do, but there are other known effects at work (such as temperature and humidity) that are known to contribute, and that would also be correlated with vitamin D levels. You’d need to do a study to tease out the causality and the relative contribution of all those factors (if one hasn’t been done already). Edited to add: this looks like a reasonable review of the literature: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-virology-012420-022445 https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-virolo...
- strogonoff 6y ago
  I believe the factors are alleged to be many, including dry air in heated rooms which irritates nasal passages, many people often huddled indoors which contributes to infection spread, and so on. Cold temperatures are, of course, involved in all of those, but very tangentially. (Unless one persistently lives in poor heating conditions, which combined with cold outside would likely take a toll on one’s immune system—from my, non-doctor’s, understanding.)
gridlockd 6y ago
One more for the pile of evidence that Vitamin D supplementation may(!) help. It baffles me that masks are officially recommended despite scant evidence that they help, yet Vitamin D is ignored. EDIT: This is a not an argument against mask usage, it's pointing out the double standard applied to two different cheap and low-risk interventions.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  Masks have a 100 year history of helping to stop respiratory infections. I'm taking vitamin D, but as the sun shining have other advantages as well (being outside, not coughing that much because of the better weather), it's harder to decide whether taking extra vitamin D helps.
- Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
  There is a lot of evidence for efficiency of masks, actually: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31142-9/fulltext?#.XxRifFxeF38.facebook https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
  - gridlockd 6y ago
    That is, as usual, a basket of low-quality studies that suggest that surgical masks may(!) decrease infection. In other words, scant evidence, just like I said. The difference is in the branding.
    - Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
      > basket of low-quality studies In what way are they low-quality? They are basically as good of a quality as the ethical considerations allow any studies to be made in this area (it's not like you can make an RCT that actively tries to infect participants to study how well the virus does). In what context are you using the word "scant" here? What kind of practical (realistic) evidence would even satisfy your judgement here as "non-scant"?
    - swader999 6y ago
jimmyswimmy 6y ago
I'd be interested to see the results broken out by racial group. There is evidence that blacks do not metabolize vitamin D the same way that whites do, and the standard test for vitamin D concentration does not measure its bioavailability accurately. This could strongly affect the results depending on the racial distribution of participants. In other words this effect could reduce the significance of the results. Here's a popular article on the topic. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/11/20/246393329/how-a-vitamin-d-test-misdiagnosed-african-americans https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/11/20/2463933... though there's plenty of research articles available. The difference is that the test evaluated 25(OH)D concentration, and not 1,25(OH)D which is the useful (metabolized) compound. There is currently no standard test for the latter, which is why they didn't do it. Though I would prefer to see those results, it would be easier at the present time to parameterize the study by racial group to reduce or eliminate this effect. That said it would be nice if we could all just take a nice cheap vitamin for this. Caveat: I am not in life sciences. Edit. They do show a figure which breaks out the relationship by race. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0239252.g002 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/... and it is much stronger for African Americans. Perhaps my hypothesis was incorrect.
- Kednicma 6y ago
  Please knock off this racist shit. All humans metabolize vitamin D in the same way; we all would suffer rickets if not for vitamin D, we all make small amounts of vitamin D with our skin and sunlight but we need more in our diet, etc. The spectrum of skin color does not indicate a massive deficit in vitamin D production or uptake; rather, it is a delicate balancing act between slightly reduced chance of rickets vs. slightly reduced chance of skin cancer. Skin color doesn't guarantee protection from either. The "nice cheap vitamin" you can take daily is fortified milk, if you don't want to take vitamin D supplements directly. We pair vitamin D with vitamin A and calcium in milk in order to try to improve bone development. Edit: Over ten karma lost so far in this thread, for calling out racism and explaining why it's bogus. Thanks HN; you're a huge disappointment.
  - beervirus 6y ago
sradman 6y ago
The prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection was 12.5%, 8.1%, and 5.9% for patients with deficient, adequate, and high levels of serum Vitamin D, respectively. This study clearly demonstrates correlation but further studies are needed to establish causative links. The data comes from Quest labs that allowed the researchers to use the unique patient ID to associate SARS-CoV-2 PCR lab results with 25(OH)D blood test results. The dataset includes 190K patients.
- beagle3 6y ago
  Should be noted that the vitamin D levels were from the past 12 months. This is pure correlation, as Deva Boone’s excellent blog clearly explains. However, a few days ago there was on the HN front page a link to what appears to be causal effect - Covid patients who were given vitamin D On admission did better than those who didn’t. That study had some limit and they had a couple of uneliminated confounders - but the body of evidence does hint that proper vitamin D supplementation is likely beneficial in fighting Covid.
  - janekm 6y ago
    I believe this is the study you are referring too: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7456194/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7456194/ Massive effect size which somewhat compensates for the small N in this seemingly well-designed study.
- fiatjaf 6y ago
  No study can ever establish causative links.
  - rflrob 6y ago
    A properly designed, well powered, double blind randomized controlled trial does a much better job at establishing causation than a retrospective correlation study, though.
  - IgorPartola 6y ago
    Really? So atomic bombs explode when we set them off just by coincidence? Penicillin just happens to be administered every time the body decides to start fighting a bacterial infection?
mg 6y ago
I often wonder how fast the effect of vitamins is. Let's imagine would could measure the level of Covid-19 symptoms with infinite precision. And let's imagine Vitamin D has a positive effect. And let's imagine we have infinitely large test groups. Then how long after the intake of Vitamin D would we see a difference in symptom levels compared to the placebo group? Would it take weeks? Days? Hours? Minutes? Seconds?
- scottlocklin 6y ago
  Hours: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4463890/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4463890/ FWIIW vitamin-D level is almost certainly why brown people and nursing home residents are disproportionately dying of Corona-chan.
  - bamboozled 6y ago
    What is corona-chan?
    - buzer 6y ago
      If it exists, there is probably a cute anthropomorphic representation of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBoojBTEPaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBoojBTEPaI
  - veridies 6y ago
    I mean, nursing home residents are typically older, meaning that they and everyone around them are more susceptible to the disease (meaning it's likely to spread faster and be more deadly). Black and brown people disproportionately work in service jobs where they get exposed to a lot more people; they're also less healthy on average than whites. It seems like there are other very likely causal factors than just vitamin D.
meddlepal 6y ago
Never purchased vitamin D before, if I were to walk into a CVS or Wallgreens what would I be looking for? Is this something you can just buy OTC?
- spuz 6y ago
  Yeah, you can easily purchase it over the counter and it's very cheap. You can find it in the vitamins and supplements section. You should probably be looking for "high-strength" pills of 1000 IU. I won't say exactly how much you should be taking, but typical recommendations are of at least 1000 IU per day.
  - tzs 6y ago
    If you want to do around 1000 IU per day, it may be worth looking at multivitamins. For example, Flintstones Complete [1] chewable children's multivitamins are 800 IU per tablet. One or two tablets a day of those should have you covered. If you want to take much larger doses of some vitamin, say 5000 IU a day of D, it would probably not be a good idea to do it via multivitamins because you would then be getting large doses of many other vitamins and minerals. At the very least you'd have to do a lot more research to make sure all of them are safe in larger doses. [1] Just because you an adult doesn't mean you have to settle for the bland or worse taste of "adult" multivitamins. We are allowed to take flavorful children's vitamins too.
    - joshvm 6y ago
      We have the chewy ones from Bassetts. The amount of Vitamin D is low though, only 5ug - typically the standalone supplements are at least 15ug. It should be safe to take a multivitamin plus a separate D tablet. The NHS limit is 100ug I think, which you shouldn't be going near even if you take the "max strength" tablets (up to 75ug).
- hugs 6y ago
  It would look like a gallon of milk or a box of cereal. (Many foods are fortified with vitamin D. Check food labels for the level they provide.)
sebst 6y ago
There was recently a case in Amsterdam where visitors of a large night club didn’t get infected before 11pm. After 11 the club had to close its windows and people got infected. Whenever there is a study about VitD deficiency, it could simply mean that it has something to do with time spent outside and temperatures. Isn’t COVID less likely to transmit outside?
- BjoernKW 6y ago
  Yes, but that's due to aerosols being much more volatile outside than inside.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Certainly, but I think that still leaves a lot of room for a non-causal correlation. In a toy model where Covid-19 is uniformly present in N% of indoor spaces and 0% of outdoor spaces, we'd expect infection rates to correlate strongly with vitamin D levels even if vitamin D doesn't affect the virus at all.
jshaqaw 6y ago
Our family takes vitamin d supplements. I’m not sure what the ultimate efficacy is but the low risk-high potential reward seems compelling. My kids think the yummy gummy versions are a treat anyway. Just be aware that like most things you can take too much vitamin d. By all means take some supplement but don’t overdo it or the low risk part of the equation changes.
ralala 6y ago
Could it be that just both, vitamin D deficiency and covid-19 risk, are much higher for people that stay inside most of the day (e.g. have office jobs)? Vitamin D is created from sunlight. Covid-19 is transmitted by aerosols. Is there additional evidence that Vitamin D supplements may help or do we just know about the correlation?
- cwwc 6y ago
  Brilliant thought, though I hope it is untrue.
  - kebman 6y ago
    Well, there's this article, also posted earlier on HN: https://www.devaboone.com/post/vitamin-d-part-3-the-evidence?postId=5f4e8bf673d853002ded6cd3&fbclid=IwAR20eDNcj1qsa6lkPCkJTYDV4ql0FEPSNiASbZ-j9xyD8RC8lot5vcSqsKg https://www.devaboone.com/post/vitamin-d-part-3-the-evidence... My personal experience with Cod Liver Oil (usually taken in Norway due to its high contents of Vitamin D) is that it really helps against dry lips. But you get a rather fishy breath from it...
    - jusssi 6y ago
      You can get it in capsules. That should solve any taste and smell problems.
      - ComputerGuru 6y ago
        It depends. Some people still find them to be too fishy, but I’ve heard storing the plastic pill bottle in the freezer and downing them frozen can further mitigate the fishiness and reduce fishy reflux.
- acqq 6y ago
  The study from the title is indeed just a correlation, from the abstract: "This study used a retrospective, observational analysis of deidentified tests performed at a national clinical laboratory." Whenever you see a "retrospective, observational" related to anything having to do with medicine or biology, consider that the experts seldom see that as a proof of anything, but only a hint to a possible hypothesis that could be investigated in some other way (and then confirmed or rejected). As another example that correlation doesn't mean causation, even if the paper is published about the correlation, see: https://youtu.be/UHDi6tNMHyU?t=2780 https://youtu.be/UHDi6tNMHyU?t=2780 That "bald men and Covid-19" study did not control for age (where the older people are more probable to be both more bald and have worse outcome, making correlation not saying much when that is not controlled for), this study seems didn't control for "staying inside most of the day" or even "inside with more people" etc. Good catch.
guscost 6y ago
Yes, this means you should measure your blood Vitamin D and supplement whenever it shows up as deficient (much more likely in the winter). Yes, correlation does not prove causation, and yes, the recent randomized controlled study[0] may have problems too, but in aggregate the evidence is overwhelming. Don’t forget! [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960076020302764 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096007602...
ineedasername 6y ago
We don't know the source of the vitamin D: For example it's entirely possible that the type of person who has higher vitamin D levels is the type of person who takes care of themselves through things like vitamin supplements, and people who take care of themselves are less likely to have preventable underlying conditions. So, as always, it's important to remember that this study was retrospective, not experimental in nature.
- rflrob 6y ago
  Or even that people who take supplements are more likely to get a “just in case” Covid test than someone who doesn’t supplement.
  - MiroF 6y ago
    ^ I think this is potentially the largest lurking variable here.
  - graeme 6y ago
    This would mean we should expect positivity and vitamin d levels to correlate. The study found reverse correlation.
    - MiroF 6y ago
      I can see how it's confusing, but no. If the type of person to take Vitamin D comes in for a test with less symptoms "just in case", then the probability that they are positive given that they are tested is lower.
      - graeme 6y ago
        Oh you’re right. I didn’t think carefully enough. Thanks! This does seem like a major factor to tease out.
    - ineedasername 6y ago
      No, if it's true, then it means that people taking taking vitamin D are more geared towards preventative measures, so they are more likely to get tested when in the absence of symptoms. More people who don't need to get tested would result in more negative test, so the inverse correlation is still the expects result.
Zigurd 6y ago
Be careful with overdosing, though. Some people need high doses because they are very deficient. It is sold OTC in high doses. The amount of vitamin D in your body accumulates if you take it daily at high doses. Don't go overboard. Beyond a readily attainable threshold, more is not better.
m12k 6y ago
Most likely, what this shows is just that people with strong immune systems that can fight off the corona-virus also tend to not have vitamin D deficiency (in part because frail people tend to spend less time outside in the sun).
AlbertoGP 6y ago
Dr. John Campbell, a registered nurse in the UK, has spoken about this subject for months evaluating the evidence. You can find several videos about it in his YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF9IOB2TExg3QIBupFtBDxg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF9IOB2TExg3QIBupFtBDxg This would be the one to start with: “Vitamin D, large scale studies” (12 sept. 2020) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNji13yoW9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNji13yoW9g
godelzilla 6y ago
Most upvoted comment is scientific racism with the opposition flagged. Typical HN.
macawfish 6y ago
There is a whole body of research around the ways that vitamin D modulates inflammation, helps regulate calcium homeostasis and strengthens circadian rhythm. Here is some relevant research: - vitamin D is directly involved in regulating the renin-angiotensin system, including ACE2 expression. ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3999581/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3999581/ ) - vitamin D has been shown to have anti-inflammatory activity with respect to cytokines specifically involved in advanced COVID-19 cases ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6164284/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6164284/ ) - vitamin D and magnesium insufficiency both cause hypocalcemia, which has been connected to COVID-19 severity: ( https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-17575/v1 https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-17575/v1 ) - magnesium and vitamin K2 also modulate calcium homeostasis ( you can look this one up yourself I need to get off this phone ) ^^^ this is a snippet from a letter I sent to the local health department. I sure hope someone read it!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- shadowmore 6y ago
  I keep seeing data points like this, but does supplementing vitamin D work? Does it make sense to read things like this and conclude that taking a vitamin D supplement pill daily is a good idea?
  - teknopaul 6y ago
    If you are deficient, yes. If you are any vitamin or mineral dificient you should supplement. What this article says is: it is important, here's how much.
  - MoroCode 6y ago
    It just shows a strong correlation regardless of other factors such as demographics. The causation of such correlation is not yet determined. Although its probably a good idea to make sure you're not deficient whether or not vitamin D has an effect
  - 6y ago
lebuffon 6y ago
As a official member of the "old fart" society I have a memory of something from 50ish years ago, probably in Time magazine, that documented the fact the US military found cases of rickets associated with low vitamin D levels in personnel stationed at the DEW (Distant Early Warning) line, a group of radar stations in the high arctic. The cases were among people with darker skin. So there's some old evidence correlating Vitamin D, skin shade and sunlight exposure. Wish I could remember the source...
esaym 6y ago
So I eat two bowls of cereal with milk a day, live in Texas and out in the sun several times a week (mowing, gardening, etc). Do I need to worry about vitamin D?
- Laremere 6y ago
  Your primary care physician is who you should ask. Mine takes a blood test with the yearly physical, which includes a vitamin D measurement. They can tell if you're deficient and by how much.
- ryanmarsh 6y ago
  Consider that your body evolved to be in the sun all day every day. It's possible you could still be D deficient even if you get a lot of sun relative to the typical sedentary person. A vitamin D panel can be purchased at most labs for $70. They usually offer packages that will run a complete blood count, chem, and others for a more economical price. You do not need a Dr's prescription to get these labs done. You can interpret the results yourself with a little bit of research before you go to the Dr. I get my own labs done a few times a year so when I sit down with my doctor I can show them the labs in Apple Health and then it doesn't take 3 visits to have a real conversation. You are the only advocate in the health care system for your health. I encourage everyone to lean in when dealing with doctors. I make them explain everything including their rationale. You'll find many doctors disagree with each other on even the most common problems. If they don't have the time to sit with you and explain your health to you then they shouldn't be your doctor.
- spuz 6y ago
  If you're out in the sun every day, probably not. If you are indoors all day, it's probably a good idea to take a supplement. This calculator page is a great way to estimate how much time outside it would take for you to get generate a specific level of vitamin D given your skin colour, latitude, cloud conditions, time of day and so on: https://fastrt.nilu.no/VitD-ez_quartMEDandMED_v2.html https://fastrt.nilu.no/VitD-ez_quartMEDandMED_v2.html For me it calculates only 15mins needed in the sun to get an equivalent dose of 1000IU. Note however that depending on where you read, a recommended dose per day may be 10,000-15,000IU.
gjs278 6y ago
nobody cares
mattdeboard 6y ago
I don't know anything about academic statistics. Is it a weakness in the study's conclusions that the sample size from predominantly Black & Latino communities is an order of magnitude smaller compared to non-Black & non-Latino communities? edit: I'm not trying to imply malice or anything, but I have learned the last couple years how ethnic minorities & women are often underrepresented (or not represented at all) in medical studies, leading to poor health outcomes for those communities.
- natalyarostova 6y ago
  It depends on the inference you want to make. Average treatment effects are integrated over the entire sample. But that means it can “miss” or be biased for a subsample. You can then explicitly model that subsample, but sub samples by definition have less power. It’s not just black or minority, it’s also any subsample, like a history of hear disease, or height. For further reading google: “Gelman there is never enough data”
- cacois 6y ago
  I have some experience in that area. If I'm reading this correctly, they don't know race, only ZIP code. They are extrapolating race from zip code. They also seem to be deriving results for extrapolated black/hispanic populations based on using the other populations as a control. Its really just a question of whether their sample sizes are large enough to justify a conclusion about the overall population. They are reporting a 95% confidence interval. Real back-of-the-napkin math (read: don't take this to the bank) would say that a sample size of 9,604 could get you a 95% confidence interval with a 1% margin of error on a population of 100 million. So it seems they are doing ok, but this is not to say there are not a bunch of other possible issues or confounds to consider if someone dug into the study.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  This is actually slowing down some trials in the USA as they don't have enough non-white participants. I don't know if that's because they aren't trying hard enough or ethnic groups just don't trust the studies/corps running them. Probably a mix.
Protostome 6y ago
I work as a data scientist in one of the largest US healthcare companies. We ran a similar analysis back in June and found comparable results based on our claims data. People with low vitamin D rates had higher likelihood of hospitalisation and mortality. Back there were less indications that vitamin D has any effect on Covid severity, and when I presented the analysis to our chief scientist he dismissed my conclusion.
- spuz 6y ago
  Ok... but why was your conclusion dismissed? This is very troubling.
  - Protostome 6y ago
    Quoting him: "Our data is so noisy, you can't really infer such a relationship from claims data" Since all those analyses are retrospective, it's not easy to build a case that will show a causal relationship between the outcome (hospitalization/death) and the covatiates (vitamin D levels). Some will say that this is impossible and only prospective studies will provide an unequivocal evidence. Therefore, it is not rare that retrospective studies are encountered with skepticism. What baffled me is that recommending people to take vitamin D has almost zero negative consequences, so why not? the data supports it, even if it's not a solid rock proof.
    - spuz 6y ago
      That makes sense to me. If the evidence is not rock solid, you probably should not be making medical suggestions to your customers. The idea of my insurance company suggesting I should take supplements where that isn't within the typical medical consensus or part of government advice would make me uncomfortable.
- EmilioMartinez 6y ago
  That sounds like one of the reasons why there were less indications.
aschatten 6y ago
Interesting study, but it’s has been suspected for long that vitamin D might have all this effects. Without being able to see the data, this does not feel right. I would like to see how they did cross-validation, test/train split, assigned weights, proportion of missing values. If you have data, this can be easily reproduced and studied. What if it’s overfitting?
Keyframe 6y ago
As with any source, reader be mindful of comments here on HN. When outbreak happened and lockdowns were getting in place, you could've read here people getting chloroquine and how to dose it yourself.
- natalyarostova 6y ago
  The risk profile of vitamin d is different than chloroquine. Taking vitamin D on weak evidence still passes cost vs benefit.
schwax 6y ago
Derek Lowe wrote a post this week on the "bradykinin hypothesis," and how it has been gaining traction as a unifying model that can explain many of the observed effects of infection, including sensitivity to vitamin D levels. [1] https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/09/08/bradykinin-and-the-coronavirus https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/09/08/br...
Fatheroftruth 6y ago
https://amirarticles.com/positive-points-of-trump-term/ https://amirarticles.com/positive-points-of-trump-term/ Trump becomes very popular every day, lets discuss some points to find out why people love him more compare to Biden? I choose only a few important Positive Points of Trump 1st Term, but there are too many more.
sandstrom 6y ago
I'm not arguing against this paper, or that Vitamin D could be very helpful for covid-19 and other things. But for casual readers it's good to know that Vitamin D is quite potent (it's a steroid hormone, in the same category as estrogen, testosterone and cortisol). Too much is also harmful. https://www.devaboone.com/post/vitamin-d-part-1-back-to-basics https://www.devaboone.com/post/vitamin-d-part-1-back-to-basi... https://www.devaboone.com/post/vitamin-d-part-2-shannon-s-story https://www.devaboone.com/post/vitamin-d-part-2-shannon-s-st... https://www.devaboone.com/post/vitamin-d-part-3-the-evidence https://www.devaboone.com/post/vitamin-d-part-3-the-evidence
ColanR 6y ago
It's nice that HN has finally moved beyond labeling Vitamin D's relevance to Covid a conspiracy theory. I put some articles on here about it a month or two (edit: 6 months) ago, and posters went as far as to go through my submission history and call me a conspiracy theorist for my "history of posting debunked vitamin D conspiracies". Edit 2: how's this for ironic: looking back over the past year, the single source of information about the virus that has turned out to 'get it right' most frequently (not counting noise) is 4chan.
- chimichangga 6y ago
  Fauci says that he takes vitamin D supplements and that they can lessen 'your susceptibility to infection' https://www.insider.com/fauci-takes-recommends-vitamin-d-and-c-supplements-immunity-boost-2020-9 https://www.insider.com/fauci-takes-recommends-vitamin-d-and...
  - ColanR 6y ago
    Glad he's finally willing to admit it. I hope the factcheckers stop calling it fake news soon. I wonder how many people died because it wasn't taken more seriously sooner.
    - electriclove 6y ago
      Sorry you are getting downvoted for having a dissenting view. Everything gets twisted to become political. The same people shaming those for wearing masks initially came around in their own way to advocate strongly for cloth masks. The same people who refused to acknowledge Vitamin D benefits against Covid at the beginning are coming around now. HCQ is even more political ("serious side effects") in the US. It might be less political elsewhere.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- didibus 6y ago
  I can't speak for all fact checkers, but I'd suspect that sometimes they might be more nuance provider, or in other words: reality checkers. For example, it would be exaggerated to believe that vitamin D can cure Covid and prevent its spread. It would also be a bad idea to start high dosing vitamin D unmonitored. The kind of misunderstanding of the impact and influence of such thing is often an issue when layman hear about medical and other scientific research. So I think a lot of people get worried of some people overblowing things and taking gambles. Science doesn't put its faith in anything, but sometimes layman will put their faith in preliminary results from a few studies. And another thing is, the science will change over time, and might contradict itself as well, and the layman will again begin to lose faith, because they make it about faith and beliefs, and that's dangerous.
jacquesm 6y ago
Question: Vitamin-D deficiency is also often associated with Vitiligo, discoloration of the skin. Is there any correlation between Vitiligo symptoms and COVID-19?
mountainboy 6y ago
Anyone interested in health effects of sunlight should read: "Health and Light" by John Nash Ott. 1972. Available on Amazon. Full-text PDF https://ratical.org/ratville/AoS/HealthAndLight.pdf https://ratical.org/ratville/AoS/HealthAndLight.pdf Studies effects of light on plants and animals. And that we NEED UV light, especially into our eyes. Claims that even gender of newborns (mice) can be controlled by light frequencies received by the mother. Interesting stuff. There is also "Toxic Light" on Amazon, a more contemporary work by Steven Magee that follows up on Ott's research.
sigmaprimus 6y ago
Why is Vitamin D not called "Hormone D"? I understood that vitamins could not be produced by the body, but hormones are produced by our bodies. How many "Scientists" would argue that hormone D therapy actually works instead of arguing against the efficacy of vitamin supplements and lumping the oddball possibly miss named Vitamin D in with them.
nimish 6y ago
At this point it's worth questioning why viral diseases are so prevalent in the winter in the Northern hemisphere and that they show a clear seasonality Would make a lot of sense to test vitamin d deficiency (Inc beyond RDA) vs immune system response

308 points by spuz 6y ago

Data availability got much better in the past following years (as a software engineer I can finally do modelling based on data published by medical researchers), but it's still too slow, which costs real lives. ,,Data underlying the study cannot be made publicly available due to ethical concerns about patient confidentiality'' I don't believe that any part of the data couldn't be made available (D-vitamin level - age - covid test results at least, even if location/time would be too sensitive to share). Not sharing any data has ethical concerns as well.

ketamine__ 6y ago
Wouldn't that expose more correlations that aren't proven to be causative?
- viraptor 6y ago
  There's some weird correlation in everything. That's half the numerology. Various correlations can also be useful in meta analysis (if you find some trend across many studies you can run a test for it specifically). Not publishing the raw data just in case someone doesn't know how to interpret the data is not a solution to anything.
  - Izkata 6y ago
    > There's some weird correlation in everything. For anyone who hasn't seen it yet: http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
- MiroF 6y ago
  > Wouldn't that expose more correlations that aren't proven to be causative? What is wrong with "exposing more correlations"? I don't get how that's an argument against data release.
violetgarden 6y ago
I agree! It seems like it could have been anonymized. The government site I check regarding covid news that is local to me has the person’s age, sex, test results, and county. I don’t see how vitamin d levels could be an identifier. Just venting - data during this pandemic has been one of the most frustrating parts for me. Data should be one of the tools we can use to get through this, but it’s been a struggle knowing what’s accurate and lack of certain information makes it hard to make good decisions.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  One interesting thing is that the Russian vaccine tests were criticized for not sharing raw data by lots of researchers from western countries as well. I'm definately taking vitamin D and not signing up for the Russian vaccine, but it seemed hypocrytical to me that only Russian researchers were shamed for not being transparent.
  - hcknwscommenter 6y ago
    "One interesting thing is that the Russian vaccine tests were criticized for not sharing raw data" I'm sure that, if one searched hard enough, one could find such a criticism. However, most of the criticism centered around the fact that the vaccine was "approved" on the basis of nearly zero actual human data.
    - xiphias2 6y ago
      I saw only 1 open letter signed by lots of researchers which contained many problems with the experiment: the main one for me was that the results that were supposed to be from independent experiments were extremely highly correlated. The reason behind that correlation can be not enough original data (cheating) or bad processing, but the western researchers asked for the original data to find it out.
- sroussey 6y ago
  Anonymizing patient data is quite difficult. Try a Google search: "reidentifying" patient data
gridlockd 6y ago
The really interesting data would be comorbidities that cause low Vitamin D. Those are (independent?) risk factors for severe COVID.

phkahler 6y ago

>> Until treatment and vaccine for coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) becomes widely available, other methods of reducing infection rates should be explored. Until we figure out how to profit, maybe we should let people use existing stuff so they dont die? Yeah, I woke up in a bad mood :-/

elil17 6y ago

Do any medical experts know, does this mean I should take a vitamin D pill?

xchaotic 6y ago
Not an expert at all but moderate dosage should have no side effects. Regular Overdose by 2000-3000% can have some long term negative effects.
viraptor 6y ago
Not an expert, but as usual, it depends. You may want to check your levels changing too because you can overdo it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D_toxicity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D_toxicity Talk to your doctor.
radu_floricica 6y ago
IANAD, but reasonable algorithm looks like: If you can test, test. Look online what normal levels should be - you'll find several options, pick the higher ones (look for Vitamin D Council for an upper bound recommendation) If you can't test or you test below optimum and you can sunbathe - do that. A lot. It's inherently safe as far as overdose goes. For skin cancer, it's usually worth the risk, and definitely worth it during the pandemic (unless you have specific reasons to think you're higher risk). If you can't test and can't sunbathe... in normal times I'd suggest to supplement except in summer. But in Covid times, I'd go with light supplementation during summer (<1000 UI daily) and higher dosage staring autumn (~2000 UI).
- graeme 6y ago
  Note that not that much sun exposure is required. The dminder app is a good way to estimate update based on sunniness and percent skin exposed.
  - Larrikin 6y ago
    The replies from the developer to reviews makes me not want to support this dev. Any other good options?

MayeulC 6y ago

Hmm, could this relationship also somewhat explain the bigger incidence of respiratory viruses during winter, when sun shines less, and we produce less vitamin D?

MichaelZuo 6y ago
This is a possibility. Or at least it is a plausible mechanism of action for higher susceptibility. If true we should expect seasonal variance in prevalence to decrease as you move towards the equator.
- gridlockd 6y ago
  There is in fact data that shows this correlation, I may post a source later.
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    It still isn't a strong indicator of causation, since nearly all seasonal climatic effects diminish towards the equator.
hyko 6y ago
It could do, but there are other known effects at work (such as temperature and humidity) that are known to contribute, and that would also be correlated with vitamin D levels. You’d need to do a study to tease out the causality and the relative contribution of all those factors (if one hasn’t been done already). Edited to add: this looks like a reasonable review of the literature: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-virology-012420-022445 https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-virolo...
strogonoff 6y ago
I believe the factors are alleged to be many, including dry air in heated rooms which irritates nasal passages, many people often huddled indoors which contributes to infection spread, and so on. Cold temperatures are, of course, involved in all of those, but very tangentially. (Unless one persistently lives in poor heating conditions, which combined with cold outside would likely take a toll on one’s immune system—from my, non-doctor’s, understanding.)

gridlockd 6y ago

One more for the pile of evidence that Vitamin D supplementation may(!) help. It baffles me that masks are officially recommended despite scant evidence that they help, yet Vitamin D is ignored. EDIT: This is a not an argument against mask usage, it's pointing out the double standard applied to two different cheap and low-risk interventions.

xiphias2 6y ago
Masks have a 100 year history of helping to stop respiratory infections. I'm taking vitamin D, but as the sun shining have other advantages as well (being outside, not coughing that much because of the better weather), it's harder to decide whether taking extra vitamin D helps.
Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
There is a lot of evidence for efficiency of masks, actually: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31142-9/fulltext?#.XxRifFxeF38.facebook https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
- gridlockd 6y ago
  That is, as usual, a basket of low-quality studies that suggest that surgical masks may(!) decrease infection. In other words, scant evidence, just like I said. The difference is in the branding.
  - Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
    > basket of low-quality studies In what way are they low-quality? They are basically as good of a quality as the ethical considerations allow any studies to be made in this area (it's not like you can make an RCT that actively tries to infect participants to study how well the virus does). In what context are you using the word "scant" here? What kind of practical (realistic) evidence would even satisfy your judgement here as "non-scant"?
  - swader999 6y ago

jimmyswimmy 6y ago

I'd be interested to see the results broken out by racial group. There is evidence that blacks do not metabolize vitamin D the same way that whites do, and the standard test for vitamin D concentration does not measure its bioavailability accurately. This could strongly affect the results depending on the racial distribution of participants. In other words this effect could reduce the significance of the results. Here's a popular article on the topic. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/11/20/246393329/how-a-vitamin-d-test-misdiagnosed-african-americans https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/11/20/2463933... though there's plenty of research articles available. The difference is that the test evaluated 25(OH)D concentration, and not 1,25(OH)D which is the useful (metabolized) compound. There is currently no standard test for the latter, which is why they didn't do it. Though I would prefer to see those results, it would be easier at the present time to parameterize the study by racial group to reduce or eliminate this effect. That said it would be nice if we could all just take a nice cheap vitamin for this. Caveat: I am not in life sciences. Edit. They do show a figure which breaks out the relationship by race. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0239252.g002 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/... and it is much stronger for African Americans. Perhaps my hypothesis was incorrect.

Kednicma 6y ago
Please knock off this racist shit. All humans metabolize vitamin D in the same way; we all would suffer rickets if not for vitamin D, we all make small amounts of vitamin D with our skin and sunlight but we need more in our diet, etc. The spectrum of skin color does not indicate a massive deficit in vitamin D production or uptake; rather, it is a delicate balancing act between slightly reduced chance of rickets vs. slightly reduced chance of skin cancer. Skin color doesn't guarantee protection from either. The "nice cheap vitamin" you can take daily is fortified milk, if you don't want to take vitamin D supplements directly. We pair vitamin D with vitamin A and calcium in milk in order to try to improve bone development. Edit: Over ten karma lost so far in this thread, for calling out racism and explaining why it's bogus. Thanks HN; you're a huge disappointment.
- beervirus 6y ago

sradman 6y ago

The prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection was 12.5%, 8.1%, and 5.9% for patients with deficient, adequate, and high levels of serum Vitamin D, respectively. This study clearly demonstrates correlation but further studies are needed to establish causative links. The data comes from Quest labs that allowed the researchers to use the unique patient ID to associate SARS-CoV-2 PCR lab results with 25(OH)D blood test results. The dataset includes 190K patients.

beagle3 6y ago
Should be noted that the vitamin D levels were from the past 12 months. This is pure correlation, as Deva Boone’s excellent blog clearly explains. However, a few days ago there was on the HN front page a link to what appears to be causal effect - Covid patients who were given vitamin D On admission did better than those who didn’t. That study had some limit and they had a couple of uneliminated confounders - but the body of evidence does hint that proper vitamin D supplementation is likely beneficial in fighting Covid.
- janekm 6y ago
  I believe this is the study you are referring too: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7456194/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7456194/ Massive effect size which somewhat compensates for the small N in this seemingly well-designed study.
fiatjaf 6y ago
No study can ever establish causative links.
- rflrob 6y ago
  A properly designed, well powered, double blind randomized controlled trial does a much better job at establishing causation than a retrospective correlation study, though.
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  Really? So atomic bombs explode when we set them off just by coincidence? Penicillin just happens to be administered every time the body decides to start fighting a bacterial infection?

mg 6y ago

I often wonder how fast the effect of vitamins is. Let's imagine would could measure the level of Covid-19 symptoms with infinite precision. And let's imagine Vitamin D has a positive effect. And let's imagine we have infinitely large test groups. Then how long after the intake of Vitamin D would we see a difference in symptom levels compared to the placebo group? Would it take weeks? Days? Hours? Minutes? Seconds?

scottlocklin 6y ago
Hours: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4463890/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4463890/ FWIIW vitamin-D level is almost certainly why brown people and nursing home residents are disproportionately dying of Corona-chan.
- bamboozled 6y ago
  What is corona-chan?
  - buzer 6y ago
    If it exists, there is probably a cute anthropomorphic representation of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBoojBTEPaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBoojBTEPaI
- veridies 6y ago
  I mean, nursing home residents are typically older, meaning that they and everyone around them are more susceptible to the disease (meaning it's likely to spread faster and be more deadly). Black and brown people disproportionately work in service jobs where they get exposed to a lot more people; they're also less healthy on average than whites. It seems like there are other very likely causal factors than just vitamin D.

meddlepal 6y ago

Never purchased vitamin D before, if I were to walk into a CVS or Wallgreens what would I be looking for? Is this something you can just buy OTC?

spuz 6y ago
Yeah, you can easily purchase it over the counter and it's very cheap. You can find it in the vitamins and supplements section. You should probably be looking for "high-strength" pills of 1000 IU. I won't say exactly how much you should be taking, but typical recommendations are of at least 1000 IU per day.
- tzs 6y ago
  If you want to do around 1000 IU per day, it may be worth looking at multivitamins. For example, Flintstones Complete [1] chewable children's multivitamins are 800 IU per tablet. One or two tablets a day of those should have you covered. If you want to take much larger doses of some vitamin, say 5000 IU a day of D, it would probably not be a good idea to do it via multivitamins because you would then be getting large doses of many other vitamins and minerals. At the very least you'd have to do a lot more research to make sure all of them are safe in larger doses. [1] Just because you an adult doesn't mean you have to settle for the bland or worse taste of "adult" multivitamins. We are allowed to take flavorful children's vitamins too.
  - joshvm 6y ago
    We have the chewy ones from Bassetts. The amount of Vitamin D is low though, only 5ug - typically the standalone supplements are at least 15ug. It should be safe to take a multivitamin plus a separate D tablet. The NHS limit is 100ug I think, which you shouldn't be going near even if you take the "max strength" tablets (up to 75ug).
hugs 6y ago
It would look like a gallon of milk or a box of cereal. (Many foods are fortified with vitamin D. Check food labels for the level they provide.)

sebst 6y ago

There was recently a case in Amsterdam where visitors of a large night club didn’t get infected before 11pm. After 11 the club had to close its windows and people got infected. Whenever there is a study about VitD deficiency, it could simply mean that it has something to do with time spent outside and temperatures. Isn’t COVID less likely to transmit outside?

BjoernKW 6y ago
Yes, but that's due to aerosols being much more volatile outside than inside.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Certainly, but I think that still leaves a lot of room for a non-causal correlation. In a toy model where Covid-19 is uniformly present in N% of indoor spaces and 0% of outdoor spaces, we'd expect infection rates to correlate strongly with vitamin D levels even if vitamin D doesn't affect the virus at all.

jshaqaw 6y ago

Our family takes vitamin d supplements. I’m not sure what the ultimate efficacy is but the low risk-high potential reward seems compelling. My kids think the yummy gummy versions are a treat anyway. Just be aware that like most things you can take too much vitamin d. By all means take some supplement but don’t overdo it or the low risk part of the equation changes.

ralala 6y ago

Could it be that just both, vitamin D deficiency and covid-19 risk, are much higher for people that stay inside most of the day (e.g. have office jobs)? Vitamin D is created from sunlight. Covid-19 is transmitted by aerosols. Is there additional evidence that Vitamin D supplements may help or do we just know about the correlation?

cwwc 6y ago
Brilliant thought, though I hope it is untrue.
- kebman 6y ago
  Well, there's this article, also posted earlier on HN: https://www.devaboone.com/post/vitamin-d-part-3-the-evidence?postId=5f4e8bf673d853002ded6cd3&fbclid=IwAR20eDNcj1qsa6lkPCkJTYDV4ql0FEPSNiASbZ-j9xyD8RC8lot5vcSqsKg https://www.devaboone.com/post/vitamin-d-part-3-the-evidence... My personal experience with Cod Liver Oil (usually taken in Norway due to its high contents of Vitamin D) is that it really helps against dry lips. But you get a rather fishy breath from it...
  - jusssi 6y ago
    You can get it in capsules. That should solve any taste and smell problems.
    - ComputerGuru 6y ago
      It depends. Some people still find them to be too fishy, but I’ve heard storing the plastic pill bottle in the freezer and downing them frozen can further mitigate the fishiness and reduce fishy reflux.
acqq 6y ago
The study from the title is indeed just a correlation, from the abstract: "This study used a retrospective, observational analysis of deidentified tests performed at a national clinical laboratory." Whenever you see a "retrospective, observational" related to anything having to do with medicine or biology, consider that the experts seldom see that as a proof of anything, but only a hint to a possible hypothesis that could be investigated in some other way (and then confirmed or rejected). As another example that correlation doesn't mean causation, even if the paper is published about the correlation, see: https://youtu.be/UHDi6tNMHyU?t=2780 https://youtu.be/UHDi6tNMHyU?t=2780 That "bald men and Covid-19" study did not control for age (where the older people are more probable to be both more bald and have worse outcome, making correlation not saying much when that is not controlled for), this study seems didn't control for "staying inside most of the day" or even "inside with more people" etc. Good catch.

guscost 6y ago

Yes, this means you should measure your blood Vitamin D and supplement whenever it shows up as deficient (much more likely in the winter). Yes, correlation does not prove causation, and yes, the recent randomized controlled study[0] may have problems too, but in aggregate the evidence is overwhelming. Don’t forget! [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960076020302764 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096007602...

ineedasername 6y ago

We don't know the source of the vitamin D: For example it's entirely possible that the type of person who has higher vitamin D levels is the type of person who takes care of themselves through things like vitamin supplements, and people who take care of themselves are less likely to have preventable underlying conditions. So, as always, it's important to remember that this study was retrospective, not experimental in nature.

rflrob 6y ago
Or even that people who take supplements are more likely to get a “just in case” Covid test than someone who doesn’t supplement.
- MiroF 6y ago
  ^ I think this is potentially the largest lurking variable here.
- graeme 6y ago
  This would mean we should expect positivity and vitamin d levels to correlate. The study found reverse correlation.
  - MiroF 6y ago
    I can see how it's confusing, but no. If the type of person to take Vitamin D comes in for a test with less symptoms "just in case", then the probability that they are positive given that they are tested is lower.
    - graeme 6y ago
      Oh you’re right. I didn’t think carefully enough. Thanks! This does seem like a major factor to tease out.
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    No, if it's true, then it means that people taking taking vitamin D are more geared towards preventative measures, so they are more likely to get tested when in the absence of symptoms. More people who don't need to get tested would result in more negative test, so the inverse correlation is still the expects result.

Zigurd 6y ago

Be careful with overdosing, though. Some people need high doses because they are very deficient. It is sold OTC in high doses. The amount of vitamin D in your body accumulates if you take it daily at high doses. Don't go overboard. Beyond a readily attainable threshold, more is not better.

m12k 6y ago

Most likely, what this shows is just that people with strong immune systems that can fight off the corona-virus also tend to not have vitamin D deficiency (in part because frail people tend to spend less time outside in the sun).

AlbertoGP 6y ago

Dr. John Campbell, a registered nurse in the UK, has spoken about this subject for months evaluating the evidence. You can find several videos about it in his YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF9IOB2TExg3QIBupFtBDxg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF9IOB2TExg3QIBupFtBDxg This would be the one to start with: “Vitamin D, large scale studies” (12 sept. 2020) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNji13yoW9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNji13yoW9g

godelzilla 6y ago

Most upvoted comment is scientific racism with the opposition flagged. Typical HN.

macawfish 6y ago

There is a whole body of research around the ways that vitamin D modulates inflammation, helps regulate calcium homeostasis and strengthens circadian rhythm. Here is some relevant research: - vitamin D is directly involved in regulating the renin-angiotensin system, including ACE2 expression. ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3999581/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3999581/ ) - vitamin D has been shown to have anti-inflammatory activity with respect to cytokines specifically involved in advanced COVID-19 cases ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6164284/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6164284/ ) - vitamin D and magnesium insufficiency both cause hypocalcemia, which has been connected to COVID-19 severity: ( https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-17575/v1 https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-17575/v1 ) - magnesium and vitamin K2 also modulate calcium homeostasis ( you can look this one up yourself I need to get off this phone ) ^^^ this is a snippet from a letter I sent to the local health department. I sure hope someone read it!

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
shadowmore 6y ago
I keep seeing data points like this, but does supplementing vitamin D work? Does it make sense to read things like this and conclude that taking a vitamin D supplement pill daily is a good idea?
- teknopaul 6y ago
  If you are deficient, yes. If you are any vitamin or mineral dificient you should supplement. What this article says is: it is important, here's how much.
- MoroCode 6y ago
  It just shows a strong correlation regardless of other factors such as demographics. The causation of such correlation is not yet determined. Although its probably a good idea to make sure you're not deficient whether or not vitamin D has an effect
- 6y ago

lebuffon 6y ago

As a official member of the "old fart" society I have a memory of something from 50ish years ago, probably in Time magazine, that documented the fact the US military found cases of rickets associated with low vitamin D levels in personnel stationed at the DEW (Distant Early Warning) line, a group of radar stations in the high arctic. The cases were among people with darker skin. So there's some old evidence correlating Vitamin D, skin shade and sunlight exposure. Wish I could remember the source...

esaym 6y ago

So I eat two bowls of cereal with milk a day, live in Texas and out in the sun several times a week (mowing, gardening, etc). Do I need to worry about vitamin D?

Laremere 6y ago
Your primary care physician is who you should ask. Mine takes a blood test with the yearly physical, which includes a vitamin D measurement. They can tell if you're deficient and by how much.
ryanmarsh 6y ago
Consider that your body evolved to be in the sun all day every day. It's possible you could still be D deficient even if you get a lot of sun relative to the typical sedentary person. A vitamin D panel can be purchased at most labs for $70. They usually offer packages that will run a complete blood count, chem, and others for a more economical price. You do not need a Dr's prescription to get these labs done. You can interpret the results yourself with a little bit of research before you go to the Dr. I get my own labs done a few times a year so when I sit down with my doctor I can show them the labs in Apple Health and then it doesn't take 3 visits to have a real conversation. You are the only advocate in the health care system for your health. I encourage everyone to lean in when dealing with doctors. I make them explain everything including their rationale. You'll find many doctors disagree with each other on even the most common problems. If they don't have the time to sit with you and explain your health to you then they shouldn't be your doctor.
spuz 6y ago
If you're out in the sun every day, probably not. If you are indoors all day, it's probably a good idea to take a supplement. This calculator page is a great way to estimate how much time outside it would take for you to get generate a specific level of vitamin D given your skin colour, latitude, cloud conditions, time of day and so on: https://fastrt.nilu.no/VitD-ez_quartMEDandMED_v2.html https://fastrt.nilu.no/VitD-ez_quartMEDandMED_v2.html For me it calculates only 15mins needed in the sun to get an equivalent dose of 1000IU. Note however that depending on where you read, a recommended dose per day may be 10,000-15,000IU.

gjs278 6y ago

nobody cares

mattdeboard 6y ago

I don't know anything about academic statistics. Is it a weakness in the study's conclusions that the sample size from predominantly Black & Latino communities is an order of magnitude smaller compared to non-Black & non-Latino communities? edit: I'm not trying to imply malice or anything, but I have learned the last couple years how ethnic minorities & women are often underrepresented (or not represented at all) in medical studies, leading to poor health outcomes for those communities.

natalyarostova 6y ago
It depends on the inference you want to make. Average treatment effects are integrated over the entire sample. But that means it can “miss” or be biased for a subsample. You can then explicitly model that subsample, but sub samples by definition have less power. It’s not just black or minority, it’s also any subsample, like a history of hear disease, or height. For further reading google: “Gelman there is never enough data”
cacois 6y ago
I have some experience in that area. If I'm reading this correctly, they don't know race, only ZIP code. They are extrapolating race from zip code. They also seem to be deriving results for extrapolated black/hispanic populations based on using the other populations as a control. Its really just a question of whether their sample sizes are large enough to justify a conclusion about the overall population. They are reporting a 95% confidence interval. Real back-of-the-napkin math (read: don't take this to the bank) would say that a sample size of 9,604 could get you a 95% confidence interval with a 1% margin of error on a population of 100 million. So it seems they are doing ok, but this is not to say there are not a bunch of other possible issues or confounds to consider if someone dug into the study.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
This is actually slowing down some trials in the USA as they don't have enough non-white participants. I don't know if that's because they aren't trying hard enough or ethnic groups just don't trust the studies/corps running them. Probably a mix.

Protostome 6y ago

I work as a data scientist in one of the largest US healthcare companies. We ran a similar analysis back in June and found comparable results based on our claims data. People with low vitamin D rates had higher likelihood of hospitalisation and mortality. Back there were less indications that vitamin D has any effect on Covid severity, and when I presented the analysis to our chief scientist he dismissed my conclusion.

spuz 6y ago
Ok... but why was your conclusion dismissed? This is very troubling.
- Protostome 6y ago
  Quoting him: "Our data is so noisy, you can't really infer such a relationship from claims data" Since all those analyses are retrospective, it's not easy to build a case that will show a causal relationship between the outcome (hospitalization/death) and the covatiates (vitamin D levels). Some will say that this is impossible and only prospective studies will provide an unequivocal evidence. Therefore, it is not rare that retrospective studies are encountered with skepticism. What baffled me is that recommending people to take vitamin D has almost zero negative consequences, so why not? the data supports it, even if it's not a solid rock proof.
  - spuz 6y ago
    That makes sense to me. If the evidence is not rock solid, you probably should not be making medical suggestions to your customers. The idea of my insurance company suggesting I should take supplements where that isn't within the typical medical consensus or part of government advice would make me uncomfortable.
EmilioMartinez 6y ago
That sounds like one of the reasons why there were less indications.

aschatten 6y ago

Interesting study, but it’s has been suspected for long that vitamin D might have all this effects. Without being able to see the data, this does not feel right. I would like to see how they did cross-validation, test/train split, assigned weights, proportion of missing values. If you have data, this can be easily reproduced and studied. What if it’s overfitting?

Keyframe 6y ago

As with any source, reader be mindful of comments here on HN. When outbreak happened and lockdowns were getting in place, you could've read here people getting chloroquine and how to dose it yourself.

natalyarostova 6y ago
The risk profile of vitamin d is different than chloroquine. Taking vitamin D on weak evidence still passes cost vs benefit.

schwax 6y ago

Derek Lowe wrote a post this week on the "bradykinin hypothesis," and how it has been gaining traction as a unifying model that can explain many of the observed effects of infection, including sensitivity to vitamin D levels. [1] https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/09/08/bradykinin-and-the-coronavirus https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/09/08/br...

Fatheroftruth 6y ago

https://amirarticles.com/positive-points-of-trump-term/ https://amirarticles.com/positive-points-of-trump-term/ Trump becomes very popular every day, lets discuss some points to find out why people love him more compare to Biden? I choose only a few important Positive Points of Trump 1st Term, but there are too many more.

sandstrom 6y ago

I'm not arguing against this paper, or that Vitamin D could be very helpful for covid-19 and other things. But for casual readers it's good to know that Vitamin D is quite potent (it's a steroid hormone, in the same category as estrogen, testosterone and cortisol). Too much is also harmful. https://www.devaboone.com/post/vitamin-d-part-1-back-to-basics https://www.devaboone.com/post/vitamin-d-part-1-back-to-basi... https://www.devaboone.com/post/vitamin-d-part-2-shannon-s-story https://www.devaboone.com/post/vitamin-d-part-2-shannon-s-st... https://www.devaboone.com/post/vitamin-d-part-3-the-evidence https://www.devaboone.com/post/vitamin-d-part-3-the-evidence

ColanR 6y ago

It's nice that HN has finally moved beyond labeling Vitamin D's relevance to Covid a conspiracy theory. I put some articles on here about it a month or two (edit: 6 months) ago, and posters went as far as to go through my submission history and call me a conspiracy theorist for my "history of posting debunked vitamin D conspiracies". Edit 2: how's this for ironic: looking back over the past year, the single source of information about the virus that has turned out to 'get it right' most frequently (not counting noise) is 4chan.

chimichangga 6y ago
Fauci says that he takes vitamin D supplements and that they can lessen 'your susceptibility to infection' https://www.insider.com/fauci-takes-recommends-vitamin-d-and-c-supplements-immunity-boost-2020-9 https://www.insider.com/fauci-takes-recommends-vitamin-d-and...
- ColanR 6y ago
  Glad he's finally willing to admit it. I hope the factcheckers stop calling it fake news soon. I wonder how many people died because it wasn't taken more seriously sooner.
  - electriclove 6y ago
    Sorry you are getting downvoted for having a dissenting view. Everything gets twisted to become political. The same people shaming those for wearing masks initially came around in their own way to advocate strongly for cloth masks. The same people who refused to acknowledge Vitamin D benefits against Covid at the beginning are coming around now. HCQ is even more political ("serious side effects") in the US. It might be less political elsewhere.
- deleted 6y ago
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didibus 6y ago
I can't speak for all fact checkers, but I'd suspect that sometimes they might be more nuance provider, or in other words: reality checkers. For example, it would be exaggerated to believe that vitamin D can cure Covid and prevent its spread. It would also be a bad idea to start high dosing vitamin D unmonitored. The kind of misunderstanding of the impact and influence of such thing is often an issue when layman hear about medical and other scientific research. So I think a lot of people get worried of some people overblowing things and taking gambles. Science doesn't put its faith in anything, but sometimes layman will put their faith in preliminary results from a few studies. And another thing is, the science will change over time, and might contradict itself as well, and the layman will again begin to lose faith, because they make it about faith and beliefs, and that's dangerous.

jacquesm 6y ago

Question: Vitamin-D deficiency is also often associated with Vitiligo, discoloration of the skin. Is there any correlation between Vitiligo symptoms and COVID-19?

mountainboy 6y ago

Anyone interested in health effects of sunlight should read: "Health and Light" by John Nash Ott. 1972. Available on Amazon. Full-text PDF https://ratical.org/ratville/AoS/HealthAndLight.pdf https://ratical.org/ratville/AoS/HealthAndLight.pdf Studies effects of light on plants and animals. And that we NEED UV light, especially into our eyes. Claims that even gender of newborns (mice) can be controlled by light frequencies received by the mother. Interesting stuff. There is also "Toxic Light" on Amazon, a more contemporary work by Steven Magee that follows up on Ott's research.

sigmaprimus 6y ago

Why is Vitamin D not called "Hormone D"? I understood that vitamins could not be produced by the body, but hormones are produced by our bodies. How many "Scientists" would argue that hormone D therapy actually works instead of arguing against the efficacy of vitamin supplements and lumping the oddball possibly miss named Vitamin D in with them.

nimish 6y ago

At this point it's worth questioning why viral diseases are so prevalent in the winter in the Northern hemisphere and that they show a clear seasonality Would make a lot of sense to test vitamin d deficiency (Inc beyond RDA) vs immune system response