Doctors don’t seem to be able to make a decision on vitamin D.
At the height of the global coronavirus outbreak, doctors began to notice a link between vitamin D deficiency and the severity of COVID-19 disease, with one study found that 80% of patients eventually developed the disease had succumbed, often had a low nutrient content. that we mainly get from sunlight.
However, these reports have been disputed by researchers who remain conservative about supplementation, pushing for further research before encouraging consumers to add vitamin D capsules to their diet.
Vitamin D deficiency has long been on the rise, as people spend less time working and away from home and more time toiling in offices and online – and it’s now more than ever during the pandemic.
But a new report from Spanish researchers at Hospital del Mar in Barcelona has added evidence to the pro-D camp, specifically D3 or calcifediol, as a treatment for coronavirus patients. Their study of 930 COVID-19 patients found that those who received the supplement, instead of a placebo, saw a “reduced mortality rate of more than 60%,” the study authors wrote. Moreover, these patients were 80% less likely to receive intensive care in the hospital.
Only 36 of the 551 patients who took calcifediol died of the coronavirus. Meanwhile, the control group of 379 patients lost 57 to the disease. In addition, only 5% of the cohort using D3 was admitted to the ICU.
“This supports the completion of an earlier pilot in Córdoba [Spain] in which calcifediol treatment leads to a reduction of more than 50% in ICU admission in hospital COVID-19 patients, ”says the full report.
The findings were shared by the Social Science Research Network as pre-published material, pending review by medical research peers. This has not stopped some policy leaders from praising the uncontrolled findings, such as British lawmaker David Davis, who called out health officials in the UK to heed the study results.
“The findings are incredibly clear,” MP Davis said on Sunday, in a tweet that was liked by 25,000 users on Twitter. “An 80% reduction in the need for ICU and a 60% reduction in the number of deaths, simply by providing a very inexpensive and very safe therapy.”
However, Yale researcher F. Perry Wilson has called the new report “super sus” in one series of tweets fired on Sunday.
‘Folks, we need to talk about this vitamin D trial. I have no interest in this game – take vitamin D if you want, but this pre-pressure is super suspense, ”he wrote.
“If that’s true, this would be one of (if not THE most) effective treatments for COVID. But there are problems. ., ”Stated Wilson, noting that the type of” randomized “study conducted by Hospital del Mar physicians was inconsistent with the statistical model used to produce the results.
“These are super basic things – you don’t call your study a randomized trial if it’s a randomized cluster trial,” he added. “And peer reviewers would have asked them 100% to go back and rerun the statistics.”