Low Vitamin D associated 1.8X increased risk of COVID-19 death in hospital – meta-analysis Nov 4, 2020

Low serum vitamin D level and COVID-19 infection and outcomes, a multivariate meta-analysis

Jie Chen, Lixia Xie, Ping Yuan, Jianyong Ma, Peng Yu, Chunhua Zheng, Xiao Liu
Preprint Oct 27 doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.24.20218974

Objective: This study aimed to determine whether serum vitamin D is independently associated with COVID-19 infection and outcomes in patients with COVID-19.

Methods: We identified relevant studies by searching the PubMed, Embase, and medRxiv databases from December 2019 to October 1, 2020. Odds ratios (ORs) were pooled using random-effects models. Only reports with multivariate adjusted results were included to avoid the impact of potential confounding factors.

Results: A total of six studies with 377,265 patients were identified. Overall, in the categorical analysis, a low serum vitamin D level was associated with an increased risk of COVID-19

  • infection (OR: 1.47, 95% CI: 1.09- 1.97, I2=81%),
  • hospitalization (OR: 1.83, 95% CI: 1.22-2.74, I2=0%),

but not in-hospital death (OR: 2.73, 95% CI: 0.27-27.61). Notably, when vitamin D level was analyzed as a continuous variable, each 5 ng/ml increase in vitamin D level was not associated with any increased risk of COVID-19 infection (OR: 1.04, 95% CI: 0.96-1.12, I2=74%) or in-hospital death (OR: 1.02, 95% CI: 0.93-1.12).

Conclusions: Low serum vitamin D is associated with an increased risk of COVID-19 infection and hospitalization. In-hospital death showed a tendency to be increased in COVID-19 patients with low vitamin D levels. The ongoing clinical trials for evaluation of vitamin D supplementation will be key to the validation of this adjunctive treatment for COVID-19 patients.

 Download the final Nov 4 peer-reviewed version from sci-hub VitaminDWiki
     Download the previous Oct 27 pre-print version from VitaminDWiki


See also: COVID-19 1.7X more likely to be severe if low Vitamin D - meta-analysis Oct 2020

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