Vitamin D deficiency and the COVID-19 pandemic

J Glob Antimicrob Resist. 2020 Sep:22:133-134. doi: 10.1016/j.jgar.2020.05.006. Epub 2020 May 29.

¹ Gynecology Department, Centre hospitalier de Lorient, Lorient, France. Electronic address: patrick.zemb@orange.fr.
² Department of Laboratory Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
³ Department of Emergency Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
⁴ Department of Clinical Chemistry, University of Liège, CHU de Liège, Liège, Belgium.
⁵ Department of Rheumatology, Cochin Hospital, AP-HP, Paris, France.
⁶ Department of Physiology, Georges Pompidou European Hospital, AP-HP, Paris, France.
⁷ Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA.
⁸ Center of Research in Cardiovascular and Nutrition (C2VN), Aix-Marseille University & INSERM 1260, France.
⁹ Department of Clinical, Internal, Anaesthesiologic and Cardiovascular Sciences, 'Sapienza', Rome University, Viale del Policlinico 155, Rome, 00161 Italy.
¹⁰ Division of Endocrinology and Diabetology, Department of Internal Medicine, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria.
¹¹ Department of Biochemistry, Radioimmunology and Experimental Medicine, The Children's Memorial Health Institute, Warsaw, Poland.
¹² Department of Laboratory Medicine, Centre hospitalier de Lorient, Lorient, France.
¹³ Iuliu Hatieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
¹⁴ Department of Physiology, Necker-Enfants malades hospital, AP-HP, Paris, France.

Abstract

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Vitamin D deficiency is very common.
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Randomised controlled trials showed that vitamin D decreases acute respiratory infections (ARIs).
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Vitamin D deficiency is an easily modifiable factor of ARIs.
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Daily vitamin D supplementation with moderate doses is safe and cheap.
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Even a small decrease in COVID-19 infections would easily justify this intervention.

Keywords: Covid-19; Vitamin D; coronavirus; respiratory infections.