If you’ve swallowed vitamin D supplements in the hopes of staying protected from the deadly coronavirus, you may want to slow down.
Two recent studies have concluded that the idea that vitamin D supplements can protect people against COVID-19 may be misplaced.
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In two scientific papers – which have not yet been peer reviewed – there is little or no evidence of a direct link between vitamin D deficiency and coronavirus outcomes .
In one of the studies, the researchers carefully studied hundreds of thousands of participants, most of whom were white. Researchers set out to study whether giving vitamin D lowers the risk of suffering from symptomatic (or severe) COVID-19.
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The researchers also looked at people with certain genetic markers that make them predisposed to vitamin D deficiency, which is usually not influenced by external factors such as age. However, they couldn’t find any evidence to suggest that these supplements may protect against COVID-19.
Another group of researchers studied a database from mainly 24 European countries on Covid infections, rat mortality and recovery, in relation to vitamin D deficiency.
“Our analysis concluded that the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in the European population is not a significant risk factor for COVID-19 nor the rates of infection, death or cure. However, these results are not not in agreement with the results of similar research work published recently, ”the newspaper said.