New Study: Vitamin D Deficiency May Raise Risk of Getting COVID-19
Researchers at the University of Medicine in a study titled, “Association of Vitamin D Status and Other Clinical Characteristics With COVID-19 Test Results”, published on September 3, 2020 in JAMA Network Open found an association between vitamin D deficiency and the likelihood of becoming infected with the Coronavirus.
David Meltzer, MD, Ph.D., Chief of Hospital Medicine at UChicago Medicine and lead author of the study reports, “Vitamin D is important to the function of the immune system and vitamin D supplement have previously been shown to lower the risk of viral respiratory tract infections. Our statistical analysis suggests this may be true for the COVID-19 infection.”
The research team studied 489 patients at UChicago Medicine whose vitamin D levels were measured within a year before being tested for COVID-19. Patients who had a vitamin D deficiency (< 20ng/ml) that was not treated were almost twice as likely to test positive for the COVID019 coronavirus compared to patients who had sufficient levels of the vitamin.
About Vitamin D Deficiency
Half of the US population are deficient in Vitamin D. Chief Scientific Officer and Pharmacist at Invite Health, Jerry Hickey, Ph, commonly discusses the importance of Vitamin D supplementation for immunity. In a recent podcast titled, ‘Update: Vitamin D, Lung Health & The Coronavirus‘, Jerry recommends a specific form of vitamin D, called Vitamin D3.
“The issue is that right now, you cannot depend on the sun to bring your Vitamin D levels up to normal. You need to take a supplement and that is extremely important. Make sure it’s Vitamin D3, which has been shown to work better than Vitamin D2 according to several studies. And do not get it in one or two huge doses. You have to take it either weekly or every day to get that support for your lungs and your immune system.”
Jerry continues, “If you have not been taking Vitamin D all winter, you need to raise your levels right now. Chances are they are very low; too low to protect you from infection or to protect your lungs. You want to get your Vitamin D levels above 35. I would recommend taking about 6,000 units every day with food for seven days. After that, you can go down to 3,000 units a day. This should get you up to a nice sweet level pretty quickly.”
For more information, speak with your doctor or one of our healthcare professionals today. You can email a degreed healthcare professional from Invite Health at [email protected] or visit www.invitehealth.com to live chat with us without leaving your home!
