4 million infections and 116,000 American deaths could have been avoided with vitamin D
See my full commentary at HealthyThinking.substack.com/archive
See my full commentary—including PDFs, images, and video—at this link:
Conclusions from Gibbons et al, Sci Rep 2022 Nov*
“Among VA patients, vitamin D3 and vitamin D2 supplementation reduced the associated risk of [GoF] infection by 20% and 28%, and [GoF] infection ending in death within 30-days by 33% and 25%.
Black veterans receiving supplementation had a larger associated reduction than whites, although both were statistically significant, and the difference was not accounted for by differences in vitamin D serum levels.
Patients with low vitamin D levels at baseline benefited more from supplementation than patients with higher serum levels. Finally, patients receiving higher cumulative dosages and higher average daily dosages had a greater associated reduction in [GoF] infection rates than patients receiving lower dosages conditional on similar vitamin D serum levels. The most substantial dose–response relation was found in patients with the lowest vitamin D serum levels.
As a widely available, inexpensive, and safe treatment, vitamin D3 could be a helpful tool for reducing the spread of [GoF] infection and related mortality and reducing racial disparities in [GoF] outcomes.
Our findings are especially relevant to the US population, given that about half of Americans are estimated to have sub-optimal vitamin D serum levels.”
See my full commentary—including PDFs, images, and video—at this link
* Sci Rep. 2022 Nov 12;12(1):19397. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-24053-4
