The Effects of Vitamin D and COVID-Related Outcomes by Dr. Joseph Mercola
Do you know your vitamin D level? If not, getting your blood tested — and optimizing your levels — is one of the simplest and most straightforward steps you can take to improve your health, including in relation to COVID-19. Vitamin D, as an immunomodulator, is a perfect candidate for countering the immune dysregulation that’s common with COVID-19.1
As early as November 2020, it was known that there were striking differences in vitamin D status among people who had asymptomatic COVID-19 and those who became severely ill and required ICU admission. In one study, 32.96% of those with asymptomatic cases were vitamin D deficient, compared to 96.82% of those who were admitted to the ICU for a severe case.2
COVID-19 patients who were deficient in this inexpensive and widely available vitamin had a higher inflammatory response and a greater fatality rate. The Indian study authors recommended “mass administration of vitamin D supplements to populations at risk for COVID-19,”3 but this hasn’t happened, at least not in the U.S.
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As of April 21, 2021, the date the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) last updated their COVID-19 treatment guidelines/vitamin D page, they stated, “There are insufficient data to recommend either for or against the use of vitamin D for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19.”4 As you’ll see in the paragraphs that follow, however, the evidence for its use is beyond overwhelming.
Vitamin D Therapy Reduces COVID’s Inflammatory Storm
Vitamin D has multiple actions on the immune system, including enhancing the production of antimicrobial peptides by immune cells, reducing damaging proinflammatory cytokines and promoting the expression of anti-inflammatory cytokines.5 Cytokines are a group of proteins that your body uses to control inflammation.
If you have an infection, your body will release cytokines to help combat inflammation, but sometimes it releases more than it should. If the cytokine release spirals out of control, the resulting “cytokine storm” becomes dangerous and is closely tied to sepsis, which may be an important contributor to the death of COVID-19 patients.6
