Vitamin D
Vitamin D is synthesized in your skin, upon exposure to the sun. It can also be acquired through the diet, although greater than 90% of the vitamin D supply of our species is understood to be derived from exposure to ultraviolet B light, specifically from the sun.
The majority of human tissues and cells have a vitamin D receptor. Vitamin D is understood to decrease the risk of chronic illnesses ranging from autoimmune disease to cardiovascular disease to infectious disease. Just a few specific health outcomes include that vitamin D deficiency causes bone and muscle weakness; and increasing vitamin D reduces the risk of fractures, falls, periodontal disease, and colorectal cancer. Vitamin D deficiency is also associated with increased risk of metabolic syndrome. Supplementation with vitamin D in infancy decreases the later development of type I diabetes. Vitamin D deficiency is also a significant risk factor for HIV patients, and likely increases susceptibility of populations to seasonal influenza11. This is consistent with growing evidence that vitamin D functions in regulating the immune system, has many anti-viral properties, and that supplementation with it provides protection against many respiratory infections.
Vitamin D in Physiology
Sources of Vitamin D
From the sun, from the diet.
Vitamin D Deficiency
Effects of Vitamin D Deficiency covid-19_and_vitamin_d
Who is likely to be deficient
The overlap between comorbidities for Covid and conditions associated with vitamin D deficiency raises an obvious question about the relationship: Is vitamin D deficiency causing these other conditions, and these conditions are (independent of vitamin D deficiency) comorbidities for Covid? Or is vitamin D deficiency causal in both Covid (infection and outcomes), and these other conditions? It seems like a very important question to answer.
A discussion of Vitamin D, hosted by Bret Weinstein, covering historic levels, guides as to when you will and won't get Vitamin D naturally from the sun, air pollution, and studies used (and ignored) by the health authorities with relation to Covid-19. The other participants are Gruff Davies and Linda Benskin, lead author of A Basic Review of the Preliminary Evidence that COVID-19 Risk and Severity Is Increased in Vitamin D Deficiency.
Vitamin D deficiency in COVID-19
Vitamin D deficiency in COVID-19 quadrupled death rate Publish date: December 11, 2020 Author(s): Becky McCall
Vitamin D deficiency on admission to hospital was associated with a 3.7-fold increase in the odds of dying from COVID-19, according to an observational study looking back at data from the first wave of the pandemic.
Nearly 60% of patients with COVID-19 were vitamin D deficient upon hospitalization, with men in the advanced stages of COVID-19 pneumonia showing the greatest deficit.
Importantly, the results were independent of comorbidities known to be affected by vitamin D deficiency, wrote the authors, led by Dieter De Smet, MD, from AZ Delta General Hospital, Roeselare, Belgium.
“[The findings] highlight the need for randomized, controlled trials specifically targeting vitamin D–deficient patients at intake, and make a call for general avoidance of vitamin D deficiency as a safe and inexpensive possible mitigation of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic,” Dr. De Smet and colleagues wrote in their article, published online Nov. 25 in the American Journal of Clinical Pathology 1)
References
https://naturalselections.substack.com/p/vitamind
1 Cashman et al 2016. Vitamin D deficiency in Europe: pandemic? The American journal of clinical nutrition, 103(4): 1033-1044.
2 Autier et al 2014. Vitamin D status and ill health: A systematic review. Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, 2(1): 76– 89.
3 Inhabitants of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic countries
4 Pearce and Cheetham 2010. Diagnosis and management of vitamin D deficiency. BMJ, 340: 142-147.
5 Martinaityte et al 2017. Vitamin D stored in fat tissue during a 5-year intervention affects serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels the following year. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 102(10): 3731-3738.
6 Lamberg-Allardt 2006. Vitamin D in foods and as supplements. Progress in biophysics and molecular biology, 92(1): 33-38.
7 Bischoff-Ferrari et al 2006. Estimation of optimal serum concentrations of 25-hydroxyvitamin D for multiple health outcomes. The American journal of clinical nutrition, 84(1): 18-28.
8 Chiu et al 2004. Hypovitaminosis D is associated with insulin resistance and β cell dysfunction. The American journal of clinical nutrition, 79(5): 820-825.
9 Hypponen et al 2001. Intake of vitamin D and risk of type 1 diabetes: a birth cohort study. Lancet 2001; 358:1500-3.
10 Akimbekov et al 2020. Effects of sunlight exposure and vitamin D supplementation on HIV patients. J Steroid Biochem. Mol. Biol.2020, 200: 105664.
11 Cannell et al 2006. Epidemic influenza and vitamin D. Epidemiol. Infect. 2006, 134: 1129–1140.
12 Beard et al 2011. Vitamin D and the anti-viral state. J. Clin. Virol. 2011, 50: 194–200
13 Ponsonby et al 2002. Ultraviolet radiation and autoimmune disease: insights from epidemiological research. Toxicology, 181: 71-78.
14 Berwick et al 2005. Sun exposure and mortality from melanoma. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 97(3): 195-199
15 Holick 2007. Vitamin D deficiency. New England journal of medicine, 357(3): 266-281
16 See Holick 2007, table 2, for a more thorough overview of causes of Vitamin D deficiency.
17 Since the original writing, but still before publication on October 26, 2021, that number has climbed to nearly 14,000 results, which seems improbable.
18 Lordan 2021. Notable developments for vitamin D amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but caution warranted overall: A narrative review. Nutrients, 13(3): 740.
19 Rubin, R., 2021. Sorting out whether vitamin D deficiency raises COVID-19 risk. JAMA, 325(4): 329-330.
20 Benskin 2020. A basic review of the preliminary evidence that COVID-19 risk and severity is increased in vitamin D deficiency. Frontiers in public health, 8: 513.
21 A “cited ref” search finds all of the papers that have cited that one you are looking at—it goes forward in time. To do a “cited ref” search, follow my link above, or: Find the paper in google scholar by pasting the title. Having found the paper, at the bottom of the reference, to the right of the quotation marks, click on “Cited by 70” (the number may have climbed by the time you get to it). Go to town: there are 70 more papers on this topic at your fingertips.
22 Sidiropoulou et al 2021. Unraveling the roles of vitamin D status and melanin during Covid‑19 (Review). International Journal of Molecular Medicine, 47(1): 92-100.
23 Mariani et al 2021. Association between vitamin D deficiency and COVID-19 incidence, complications, and mortality in 46 countries: an ecological study. Health security, 19(3): 302-308.
24 Radujkovic et al 2020. Vitamin D deficiency and outcome of COVID-19 patients. Nutrients, 12(9): 2757.
25 Brenner and Schöttker 2020. Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost nine of ten COVID-19 deaths: Time to act. comment on: “Vitamin D deficiency and outcome of COVID-19 patients”. Nutrients 2020, 12, 2757. Nutrients, 12: 3642.
26 Kompaniyets et al 2021. Peer Reviewed: Underlying Medical Conditions and Severe Illness Among 540,667 Adults Hospitalized With COVID-19, March 2020–March 2021. Preventing Chronic Disease, 18: E66.
27 Davies et al 2020. Age-dependent effects in the transmission and control of COVID-19 epidemics. Nature medicine, 26(8): 1205-1211.
28 Gallagher 2013. Vitamin D and aging. Endocrinology and Metabolism Clinics, 42(2): 319-332.
29 Golestaneh et al 2020. The association of race and COVID-19 mortality. E Clinical Medicine, 25: 100455.
30 Giménez et al 2021. Vitamin D deficiency in African Americans is associated with a high risk of severe disease and mortality by SARS-CoV-2. Journal of Human Hypertension, 35(4): 378-380.
31 Abbas 2017. Physiological functions of Vitamin D in adipose tissue. The Journal of steroid biochemistry and molecular biology, 165: 369-381.
32 González et al 2004. Vitamin D insufficiency and deficiency in chronic kidney disease. American journal of nephrology, 24(5): 503-510.
33 Anglin et al 2013. Vitamin D deficiency and depression in adults: systematic review and meta-analysis. The British journal of psychiatry, 202(2): 100-107. 33(7): 619-637.
34 Casseb et al 2019. Potential role of vitamin D for the management of depression and anxiety. CNS drugs,
35 Parva et al 2018. Prevalence of vitamin D deficiency and associated risk factors in the US population (2011-2012). Cureus, 10(6).