COVID-19 and association with vitamin D; The Lancet

[MBAnderson]

thelancet.com/journals/land...

Coronavirus Pandemic Update 74: Vitamin D & COVID 19; Academic Censorship

youtube.com/watch?v=-zK8LgV...(Not working as expected?)

[MBAnderson]

youtube.com/watch?v=r6ewlQs...(Not working as expected?)

[park_bear]

Vitamin D and NAC supplementation are low-risk interventions. There is good reason to believe they will mitigate the severity of coronavirus infection. Mitigation is particularly important in the US and other places where testing has been inadequate.

[MBAnderson in reply to park_bear]

It's just been in the last 12 months that I've come to appreciate how important vitamin D is. Heretofore, I've always taken it for granted.

[MarionP in reply to park_bear]

Indeed. D and zinc and copper as cofactor for zinc and the b vitamins...all in the typical daily multiple vitamin pill. If you do get symptoms and Don't take NAC, find some to start immediately. Take daily aspirin to lessen chance of clits, and teach people about the nursing practice called "proning."

[ElliotGreen]

"Intervention trials have rarely shown benefits of vitamin D supplementation as treatments or preventive measures. However, one important exception to this general trend is for upper respiratory tract infections: a 2017 meta-analysis of individual patient data from 11 321 participants in 25 randomised controlled trials showed that vitamin D supplementation protected against acute respiratory tract infections and that patients with very low (<25 nmol/L) serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations (a marker of vitamin D status) gained the most benefit."

[sharoncrayn in reply to ElliotGreen]

Lots of debate about what is the "optimal level" of vitamin D, not about the need for D. I believe almost all the covid-19 observational studies clearly show a correlation between low levels of D and infection.

Black and Hispanic levels of infections correlate extremely well with observations about their low levels. Understandable given their skin pigment.

Really not much debate.

Sharon

[WinnieThePoo]

Sounds to me like a perfect excuse for more sunbathing.

I shall address the matter this very day 😄

[MarionP in reply to WinnieThePoo]

Research has it that the skin which has historically been least exposed provides the most efficient production.

[WinnieThePoo in reply to MarionP]

[sharoncrayn in reply to MarionP]

I'm not sure I agree that "skin which has historically been least exposed provides the most efficient production." Probably Much more important to get adequate exposure early in life before 21 in terms of overall health benefit.

[MarionP in reply to sharoncrayn]

Do you have no sense of humor at all?

[sharoncrayn in reply to MarionP]

sorry I missed the joke. Probably much too subtle.

[Coot18]

if true, VitD supplements not the only solution

Nature has its way

healthline.com/nutrition/vi...

[chartist]

Part of the problem with vitamin D is that you can not produce any meaningful vitamin D in the skin as long as your shadow in the sun is longer than you are tall. Another part of the problem with D production is that as we age, our skin cholesterol level drops off and this cholesterol is needed to convert UV rays from the sun into vitamin D, consequently senior citizens are likely to only get adequate vitamin D by supplementing.

healthunlocked.com/parkinso...

Art

[sharoncrayn in reply to chartist]

Unfortunately for most PwP.

[chartist in reply to sharoncrayn]

I have a PD friend who is a young 80 and wears shorts and a short sleeve shirt pretty much all the time and is out in the sun almost daily, but he tested as "deficient" in his 25 OH d test with a 19. The reference range being 30 ng/ml ~ 100 ng/ml. By most standards, below 30 is considered insufficient and below 20 is considered deficient.

In an interventional pilot study for psoriasis and vitiligo using a very high dose of vitamin D (35,000 iu/daily) they did seem to have fairly good results, but vitamin D dosing at this very high level should only be done under a doctor's supervision!

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

It would have been nice to see this study as a randomized double blind placebo controlled study, but beggars can't be choosers, especially when it comes to vitamin and supplement studies!

The reason I wanted him to get on vitamin d, aside from the fact that he was deficient had to do with this study :

academic.oup.com/ajcn/artic...

I never showed him the study, but from what I saw of him, his response was similar to the study results.

Art

[sharoncrayn in reply to chartist]

Crummy study. I wouldn't cite it unless you re only relating vitamin D to PD. I was referencing observational studies to virus infections specifically covid-19.

PD is neurological; covid-19 isn't.

1,200 IUs per day for deficient individuals? You must be kidding.

[chartist in reply to sharoncrayn]

Yes, I took it from a list of studies from another post I put up a few years ago here about vitamin D and PD. Plenty of studies out there with plenty of room for improvement.

Art

[sharoncrayn in reply to chartist]

High levels of vitamin D are critical with covid-19 (at least from the observational studies I have seen).

Two very good studies (published in JAMA Neurology) exist for retaining memory (minimizing dementia) as well which I assume one could classify as neurological. So one could link these studies to PD dementia and decline in cognition if we assume the majority of PwP are deficient in vitamin D (< 20 ng/ml).

The study on PD was OK.

[chartist in reply to sharoncrayn]

Sharon,

I like the way you think, very focused!

Art

[sharoncrayn in reply to chartist]

Thanks.

[MBAnderson]

Interview with the internationally respected epidemiologist from the U of MN.

"A minimum of 800,000 people will die over the summer and the worst is yet to come""

bluezones.com/2020/06/covid...

[ParlePark in reply to MBAnderson]

Thanks Marc. Very good article.