Scientists of the University of McGill in Canada showed that Vitamin D is likely to be useless for the prevention of COVID-19. The article of researchers has been published in the magazine PLOS MED.
Specialists held Mendelev randomization to assess the causal relationship between the level of vitamin D and susceptibility to the coronavirus and the severity of the symptoms of COVID-19. It is known that the level of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (one of the forms of vitamin D) in the blood depends on some genetic variants (polymorphisms), therefore, if vitamin D really affects the incidence of COVID-19, the presence of polymorphisms should also have an effect on the risk of infection and development severe infection.
Full-bearing search for an association aimed at identifying the connection between genomic variants and vitamin D levels covered biomedical data 443,734 people. To study the connection between the genotype and susceptibility to COVID-19, the authors analyzed the genetic versions of 4134 people with COVID-19 and 1,284,876 people without COVID-19 of 11 countries. It turned out that an increase in the level of 25-hydroxyvitamin D was not significant with susceptibility to COVID-19.
The results indicate that an increase in the levels of circulating vitamin D by additives cannot improve the outcomes associated with COVID-19. This confirms that the level of vitamin D is associated with such third-party factors as the age and the presence of chronic diseases, which also affect the susceptibility to coronavirus.