Association of Serum Vitamin D level and COVID-19 infection: A Case-control Study
Najat Abdrabbo Alyafei, Bushra Naaz Fathima Jaleel, Abdel-Salam G. Abdel-Salam, Hamda Ali Al-Saadi, Samya Ahmad Al Abdulla
Qatar Medical Journal, doi:10.5339/qmj.2022.48
Background: Vitamin D is considered a potent modulator of the immune system, albeit its role in COVID-19 infection is a matter of debate. The present study aimed to estimate the association between serum vitamin D levels and COVID-19 among people in Qatar. Methods: This case-control study, approved by the Institutional Review Board of Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) Qatar, retrospectively evaluated the principal public healthcare sector population data repository retrieved from the cloud-based Electronic Health Record (EHR) software-Cerner, during April 2020-2021. The health records of all adult patients aged .18 years who had undergone the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test and whose medical records had documented serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25 (OH)D] levels were analyzed. Results: A total of 924,173 EHRs were extracted, of which 62,451 EHR comprised of 16,446 (26.3%) COVID-19 patients and 46,005 (73.7%) negativecontrol group patients met the inclusion criteria. The odds ratio (OR) among different categories of vitamin D deficiency (VDD) revealed that people with mild/ moderate VDD were 1.18 times (95% CI 1.126-1.258) and those with severe VDD were 1.90 times (95% CI 1.116-1.251) more likely to have COVID-19 infection when compared to the people with optimal serum vitamin D level. On applying multiple logistic regression, the odds of having COVID-19 infection were found to be 1.27 times (95% CI 1.184-1.371) higher among those with mild/moderate VDD and 1.32 times (95% CI 1.206-1.405) higher among those with severe VDD when compared to people with optimal vitamin D level ( p , 0.001).
Conflicts of Interest The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Authors' Contribution All authors contributed to the design, data collection, data analysis, and interpretation of the results. NAA, BNFJ, HAA and SAA led the data collection. ASG led the data analysis. NAA, BNFJ, ASG, SAA and HAA led the interpretation and presentation of results. NAA and BNFJ wrote the initial draft of the manuscript. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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