Can Vitamin D Protect Against Covid?
In the first quarter of 2020, the world experienced a great ordeal with the emergence and spread of the COVID-19 virus. For a more significant part of the second and third quarter, most countries were shut down with little or no movement and most organizations revamping their traditional physical-presence-at-the-office working mode.
With the number of infected and casualties from the COVID-19 virus pandemic rising, scientists and pharmacists had to be on their toes to produce a drug or vaccine in time to alleviate the ever-spreading virus. The vaccine(AstraZeneca), which was later developed and in circulation in late 2020, has helped curb the wildfire-like spread of the virus, but this hasn’t stopped researchers and medical enthusiasts from seeking out a way to circumvent the virus.
Quite recently, a new study at the University of Chicago Medicine researchers showed that people(especially blacks) with a high level of vitamin D tend to have a lower risk of being infected with the COVID-19 virus(SARS-CoV-2).
In the study, about 3,000 patients were tested for vitamin D 2 weeks before a Covid-19 test was carried out. The results showed that black individuals with levels of 40 ng/ml and greater showed less susceptibility to the virus than those with levels less than 40 ng/ml. The lead author in the study, Doctor David Meltzer, commented, “The new results suggest that having vitamin D levels above the normally sufficient level can be linked to a decrease in the risk of testing for Covid-19 at least in black individuals”. Adding that apart from the sun, vitamin D can be obtained from supplements. In response to this, Dr Meltzer and his team have embarked on researches to know how effective vitamin D supplements are against the Covid-19 virus.
The relationship between vitamin D levels and Covid-19 susceptibility is proving to be a hot topic for scientists as a new study has shown that about 80% of those diagnosed with Covid-19 were vitamin D deficient. Though it is currently difficult to determine the direct linkage of vitamin D levels to the immunity against the Covid Virus, scientists are still working on this to ascertain if it's due to some biological factors or they are related directly.
But the whole phenomenon begs the question. Why is this peculiar to black people? Is it because of the pigmentation in their skin? These are the questions that have been asked since this was discovered. But it has been postulated that, because most blacks are vitamin D deficient, an increased amount of vitamin D in their system could change the extent to which they metabolize vitamin D. And because people with darker skin produce less vitamin D for the same amount of sunlight, there would be differences in how the vitamin D is managed.
Generally, the relationship between vitamin D and the Covid-19 virus isn’t fully known, but research is ongoing to ascertain this, and who knows? This might create a new horizon in preventing the deadly virus, especially for blacks.
