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Covid-19 and Vitamin D

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muslhead

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I've been taking vitamin D for years, and along with that eating natto regularly to provide plenty of vitamin K2. I have no idea if it's really doing anything good for me. I've acquired a taste for natto if nothing else.
i had to look up what natto is.
Sounds .... welll .... uhmmm ... interesting
 

Dimifoot

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did you read the entire article or are you just transcribing the section that fits your bias?
It’s a Lancet editorial, and yes I have read it. I have posted a link so anyone can read it also.
It summarizes what I have already explained in lay terms.

Regarding NICE and the UK recommendations/practice:
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng...-rapid-guideline-vitamin-d-pdf-66142026720709

In summary, it starts with current general recommendations for vitamin D:
0C4DE3D3-8CE4-453B-AAEA-FB7DB91812E8.jpeg

......

Then follows what it has been already mentioned in this thread about level of evidence, causality, need for RCTs etc.
(Well, we might have them peer reviewed some months after we are all vaccinated :facepalm:.)

In the meanwhile, just to be on the safe side, the NHS is providing 4 months free supply of Vitamin D for high risk citizens (clinically extremely vulnerable) from coronavirus (COVID-19).
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/people-at-higher-risk/get-vitamin-d-supplements/

:)

Everyone happy now?
 

Rottmannash

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Exactly! That is the one of the points in the first article/rant: low cost, high availability, low risk, high reward, and backed by dozens of studies. So why do the governments still ignore it? I don't understand.
Why do you think "governments still ignore it"? I work in health care, with COVID pts, many that I've watched die and I don't believe the CDC is ignoring the effect of vitamin D on morbidity or mortality. I've been taking 5000 iu of D3 and have been for years. I contacted COVID back in July and was very ill-for about 3 1/2 weeks. I take a lot of supplements and this did little to shorten my illness. For many pts nothing can be done to save their lives-this virus is wicked and poorly understood but thank goodness vaccines are changing the equation-now if we can only persuade enough of the world's population to take them.
 

Rottmannash

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Fine, so there are flaws in the study.

I am no researcher but from what I have read, why don't they take the thousands of people coming into hospitals testing positive each day, enroll them into the study, separate them by what appears to be the most common biases (age, sex, even body mass index and skin color), give 1/3 placebo, 1/3 vitamin D3, 1/3 leave alone as control group. A couple of months later measure the results and publish.

Sounds doable to me, specially in such a large scale crisis. Since there is little financial incentive for big pharma to test this, again, why are governments ignoring these strong hints?
Because one can't do those type of studies in the middle of a pandemic. If you were admitted to a hospital with COVID would you roll the dice with your life to be in a vitamin study? Because if you agreed to be in that study you would not be able to receive other proven drugs or therapies.
 

Rottmannash

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I wouldn't call a "conspiracy" by the media, government and big pharma deliberate hiding or spreading FUD. But I definitely see people in general and governments ignoring the strong hints, or just simplifying by grouping vitamin D with HCQ, Remdesivir and other non-working treatments and categorize them all as non-working. With thousands dying each day, the responsible people should be accountable for not looking and doing greater research into vitamin D. So no conspiracy, just irresponsible omitted, again in my opinion.
you believe Remdesavir isn't an effective đrug against COVID?
 
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Rottmannash

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This sums it up very nicely, written by MDs, not me.

"It is our responsibility as physicians not to wait for perfect evidence when making life-and-death decisions. Given the safety profile of vitamin D, the 40% prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in the U.S., and the fact that this season will likely be the deadliest phase of the pandemic to date, we need to act now. Identifying and eradicating vitamin D deficiency with early and aggressive supplementation in COVID-19 has the potential to save thousands of lives and should be one of our highest public health priorities."
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/90530[/QUOT

Is there anything preventing anyone who wishes to supplement with Vit D from doing so?
 

capslock

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This is came out yesterday. A large teaching hospital in Hamburg has autopsied 700 patients and determined the actual causes of death:
https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft...enhaus-a-241cab60-6b49-4927-aaac-56088a44bd9d

The article is too long to translate and post in full, but feel free to copy the article up to 3000 characters at a time and paste into deepl.com. Here's the deepl translation of the last paragraph:

Despite intensive research, there are still too few effective drugs against covid-19, says Stefan Kluge, head of the hospital's intensive care clinic. "Dexamethasone is the only drug that has been shown to reduce mortality," Kluge says. With remdesivir, on the other hand, high hopes were disappointed. "Large studies have shown that remdesivir has little effect on severely ill patients," Kluge said.

Currently, 400 drugs are being studied worldwide, but there are also extremely many setbacks, he said. "We know, for example, that vitamin D does not protect against severe courses, despite all the announcements," Kluge said.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)




The links are in the original article. The linked article about vitamin D says that the German Nutritional Society, among others, is not convinced that the Madrid study was well done (more comormidities in the placebo arm) and is generally unconvinced. On the other hand, aggregating all studies including those with low dosing may have given them exactly that picture.
 

gags11

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So you have not read the papers, dismiss them as probably both inadequately designed and controlled, classify it as "anecdotal" and make a funny comparison?

If more people react like that, I guess this explains how a year has passed with thousands people dying and dozens of studies are still being ignored.

Again, many of the papers are peer reviewed, with control groups and statistically valid. This is not "guessing".

Matias,
No one, I think is dismissing that vitamin D plays a very important role in immunity. I am an immunologist first and a physician after that, and have studied vitamin D well. In addition, I am married to someone who is involved in the development of vitamin D analogs for the treatment of certain immunologic conditions.

Many scientists, and I think doctors and nutritionists, would agree that vitamin D is a very important part of our overall immune system health. So is good diet and lifestyle. Can it be a cure for COVID? ... NO! Continue taking it as a supplement though, it is one of only few vitamins we lack, as our diets are so different from what they have been for hundreds of thousands of years before we got here.
 
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Matias

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Why do you think "governments still ignore it"? I work in health care, with COVID pts, many that I've watched die and I don't believe the CDC is ignoring the effect of vitamin D on morbidity or mortality. I've been taking 5000 iu of D3 and have been for years. I contacted COVID back in July and was very ill-for about 3 1/2 weeks. I take a lot of supplements and this did little to shorten my illness. For many pts nothing can be done to save their lives-this virus is wicked and poorly understood but thank goodness vaccines are changing the equation-now if we can only persuade enough of the world's population to take them.

Is there anything preventing anyone who wishes to supplement with Vit D from doing so?

Vaccines are great, no question about it. And if you and I take vitamins, fine. Even if some practitioners recommend, they are a minority. Overall there is little government funding on large scale research let alone giving medical guidelines for all practitioners to prescribe.
Your illness could have been fatal otherwise, ever thought about it this way?
 
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Matias

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Because one can't do those type of studies in the middle of a pandemic. If you were admitted to a hospital with COVID would you roll the dice with your life to be in a vitamin study? Because if you agreed to be in that study you would not be able to receive other proven drugs or therapies.
Actually there were several level 3 studies done with the vaccines right in the middle of the pandemic, hundreds of thousands volunteers worldwide getting shots of vaccine candidates a lot more uncertain than a common vitamin D. This should be quite easy in comparison.
 
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Matias

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you believe Remdesavir isn't an effective đrug against COVID?
The research I have found is not encouraging so far, but I am open to reading more if you or someone show me studies of how effective it is.
 
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Matias

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says that the German Nutritional Society, among others, is not convinced that the Madrid study was well done (more comormidities in the placebo arm) and is generally unconvinced. On the other hand, aggregating all studies including those with low dosing may have given them exactly that picture.
Calling other studies faults has its merits, OK. But why don't they conduct their studies in what they think it's the proper way and show the world their findings?

Many of the studies that showed lack of results used either too low dosage, or a huge initial dose and none after. While several of the successful ones use a higher initial dose but keep giving a still high dose in the following days.

Now enroll patients and segment them in usual known biases (age, comorbidities, sex, vitamin D concentration, BMI), treated x placebo x control, a few thousand volunteers each. How hard is it to give vitamin to people? Should be easy really.
 
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Matias

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Can it be a cure for COVID? ... NO!
Not a 90+% effective cure like the vaccines are, but it seems to be quite effective for faster recoveries. Low cost, low risk, why not? That is the point. Should have been administered worldwide during 2020 and even 2021 while the vaccination is going slowly in all countries (well, except Israel :) ).
 

gags11

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At least in the US vitamin D is pushed hard. It is up to the practitioners to implement. Majority, as far as I know, do. We need more though.

it’s a myth when some say sun is where you get vitamin D. For Thousands of years, humans and other animals lived and had enough of it. Even people living in Nordic latitudes. We need to eat more fish and other vitamin D sources naturally.

To give you examples about benefits, vitamin D has been shown to activate innate immune pathways against some bacteria and viruses. A good example is vitamin D activation of macrophages against intracellular bacteria. However, it is not as simple when you give it to humans as a drug, it does not works as one would expect.

At the same time, vitamin D curtailes the immune system, and is beneficial against certain autoimmune disease. We still do not understand the full extent in how it fits in the overall immune defense. it is both an adaptive immune suppressor as well as an innate immune activator
 

gags11

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A true drug or therapy would target a specific pathogen and kill it. Antibiotics are examples of this. Vitamin D and many other environmental influences can twist and affect the outcome in some way or other, yes, I can say that being healthy and eating healthy is a drug against COVID. Most with healthy lifestyle will have better outcomes.

And have you considered this? People with higher vitamin D may actually be eating more fish, which may provide the actual defense against COVID. This is just an example of how a correlation may just be a correlation
 
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