- Getting extra vitamin D may lower your risk of coronavirus infection, according to a new study.
- Black people were less likely to have COVID-19 if they had more of the nutrient, the researchers found.
- Research on vitamin D is mixed, but it can be a tool to help people vulnerable to the virus.
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There is new evidence that taking more vitamin D than recommended may protect you from contracting COVID-19, especially if you are black.
Higher levels of vitamin D have been associated with an ever lower risk of coronavirus infection in black people, according to a study published on March 19 in the JAMA Open Network.
University of Chicago researchers analyzed data from 4,314 people who were tested for COVID-19 between March and early April 2020, checking their vitamin D levels based on the previous year’s medical records.
They found that blacks who had the recommended levels of vitamin D (or slightly above) were more than twice as likely to test positive for COVID-19 than their peers with higher than recommended levels of the nutrient. And those below the recommended levels of vitamin D were even more likely to get sick.
For whites, however, there was no apparent link between vitamin D levels and coronavirus infection rates.
This study was an expansion of an earlier study by the same research team that found that people with vitamin D deficiency were twice as likely to receive COVID-19.
The researchers wanted to see if an increase in vitamin D beyond what is normally considered “sufficient” for optimal health could potentially protect against the coronavirus.
“This supports the arguments for designing clinical trials that can test whether vitamin D may or may not be a viable intervention to reduce the risk of the disease, especially in people of color,” Dr. David Meltzer, lead author of the study and chief from the University of Chicago Medicine hospital, said in a press release.
COVID-19 disproportionately affects blacks and browns, and vitamin D may be a solution
People of color may be at a disproportionate risk of vitamin D deficiency, which could partly explain why they were most affected by the virus. The human body produces vitamin D naturally when the skin is exposed to sunlight. People with darker skin take longer to produce the nutrient because they have more melanin, which blocks the sun’s ultraviolet rays.
However, there is also strong evidence that systemic racism – from precarious access to health care to less socioeconomic resources – is a driver of high rates of COVID-19 among people of color, and a supplement is not a magical solution for overcome this.
Evidence on vitamin D and coronavirus results has been mixed
A growing body of research has been studying whether vitamin D can help prevent COVID-19 or related complications, but the evidence so far is mixed.
There are good data that show a link between the increase in vitamin D and the lower risk of severe COVID-19. A small study published in October 2020 found that coronavirus patients who received a highly potent form of vitamin D were significantly less likely to need intensive care and none of them died.
Experts advocate vitamin D supplementation as a precaution, especially for vulnerable people, such as the elderly and people with pre-existing illnesses, as well as people of color. They advise that each adult consume 4,000 IU of vitamin D a day, 10 times the current dose recommended by health authorities.
Several studies, however, have found no evidence that vitamin D can cause better results. There are many factors in the research that can explain these disparities in the results, such as the amount of vitamin D ingested and at what stage of exposure to coronavirus (before infection, shortly after or at the end of the disease).
We know that vitamin D plays an important role in the health of the immune system and can protect against other respiratory viruses. More research could help medical experts better understand whether vitamin D can help patients with COVID-19 or prevent infections, and how much is ideal.
“So far, the data has been relatively inconclusive. Based on these results, we think that previous studies may have given doses too low to have a significant effect on the immune system, even if they were sufficient for bone health. it may be that different levels of vitamin D are suitable for different functions, “Meltzer said in the press release.