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Something that pisses me off is how pseudo-sceptical Vitamin D is treated. Take for example this @thetimes article. They write: There is no evidence that it does prevent Covid. This is correct but totally misses the point. Let's have a look. https://time.com/5889546/vitamin-d-coronavirus/
The study they use as argument against Vitamin D found that there no evidence that it prevents Covid infection in huge samples. But that study is pretty much useless. Why? Because they didn't assess for Covid SEVERITY. Quoting (from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1871402120301156 )
This makes this study pretty much obsolete. We already know from previous research on influenza that it doesn't necessarily PREVENT an influenza infection, but still can strongly affect SEVERITY. So let's look on the important aspects. https://www.perioimplantadvisory.com/clinical-tips/article/14176684/vitamin-d-and-covid19-disease-severity-an-old-ally-in-a-new-war
If you look at some studies on Vitamin D and inflammatory markers a reduction of interleukin-6 has been found previously. For example: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29248753/
For those that haven't heard of interleukin-6 might have heard from "cytokine storms". And those cytokine storms probably kill people with Covid. IL-6 is the cytokine that plays a major role in Covid: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340979973_Elevated_Interleukin-6_and_Severe_COVID-19_A_Meta-Analysis
So it is possible that Vitamin D might make Covid less deadly. That's all speculative though and we indeed need more research (as stated in the article). But whats totally fatal is that health officials think we should wait for results for recommendations.
People are fucking dying everyday from Covid and a lot of people have issues (like fibrosis) after a severe infection and/or Long Covid symptoms. Even with just slight chance that there is an improvement we should assess risk first before dismissing an 'unproven' treatment.
But if we are looking at risk assessment we can see that Vitamin D is fairly safe. The authors of this paper evaluated studies with insanely high amounts and are very confident that LESS than 250 μg (10.000IU)/day is a safe upper limit. https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/85/1/6/4649294
And if you look at the most recent clinical study on Vitamin D + Covid the results are striking. Yes it's a small sample size and the confidence interval is quite large, but it's nevertheless could be quite significant. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960076020302764
Yes it's true: Vitamin D is not yet proven to help, but I think 'we need more science first' is a literally fatal position at this stage. Vitamin D could prevent thousands of deaths and if it doesn't the worst case is a couple of people with hypercalcemia.
Health professionals and some 'critical' journalists are acting as if this is about a recommendation for chemotherapy and not about a fairly safe supplement.
Science is first and foremost about critical thinking. Methods do make sense, however treating them as set in stone and possibly letting people die until there is proof is naive. I recommend reading Feyerabend for those that want proof first and stubbornly stick with protocols.
Here is a video on the issue of vitamin D and circumstancial evidence. I also highly recommend that channel. @MedCramVideos is a shining beacon in terms of scientific integrity. (Not affiliated - yes I also praise people occasionally and don't just rant).
When I wrote this thread I wasn't full up to date on rthe esearch. Excessive Bradykinin seem more important than cytokines. Vitamin D downregulates RES which downregulates Bradykinin and is considered by the authors as possible medication. https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/09/08/bradykinin-and-the-coronavirus
With Bradykinin as a mechanism explaining well what happens in Covid this should also shut up wannabe scientist that didn't recommend Vitamin D, because of lack of a mechanism and who didn't properly weight in the risks for causation vs the risk of a spurious correlation.
Sometimes next year: "Oh yeah well. Now we know Vitamin D helps, but we didn't have proof in 2020. Vitamin D can cause hypercalcemia and so we wanted to prevent people getting that. Instead we decided to risk deaths. After all hypercalcemia is worse then death, isn't it?!"
