Association of vitamin D deficiency with COVID-19 severity and mortality in Iranian people: a prospective observational study
Alireza Fatemi, Seyed Hossein Ardehali, Ghazaleh Eslamian, Morvarid Noormohammadi, Shirin Malek
Acute and Critical Care, doi:10.4266/acc.2021.00605
Background: As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continues to escalate, it is important to identify the prognostic factors related to increased mortality and disease severity. To assess the possible associations of vitamin D level with disease severity and survival, we studied 248 hospitalized COVID-19 patients in a single center in a prospective observational study from October 2020 to May 2021 in Tehran, Iran. Methods: Patients who had a record of their 25-hydroxyvitamin D level measured in the previous year before testing positive with COVID-19 were included. Serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D level was measured upon admission in COVID-19 patients. The associations between clinical outcomes of patients and 25-hydroxyvitamin D level were assessed by adjusting for potential confounders and estimating a multivariate logistic regression model.
Results: The median (interquartile range) age of patients was 60 years (44-74 years), and 53% were male. The median serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D level prior to admission decreased with increasing COVID-19 severity (P=0.009). Similar findings were obtained when comparing median serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D on admission between moderate and severe patients (P=0.014). A univariate logistic regression model showed that vitamin D deficiency prior to COVID-19 was associated with a significant increase in the odds of mortality (odds ratio, 2.01; P=0.041). The multivariate Cox model showed that vitamin D deficiency on admission was associated with a significant increase in risk for mortality (hazard ratio, 2.35; P=0.019). Conclusions: Based on our results, it is likely that deficient vitamin D status is associated with increased mortality in COVID-19 patients. Thus, evaluating vitamin D level in COVID-19 patients is warranted.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS Conceptualization: AF, SHA, GE. Data curation: GE, SM. Formal analysis: SHA, GE, MN. Funding acquisition: AF, SHA, GE, MN. Methodology: AF, SHA, GE, SM. Project administration: GE. Visualization: AF, MN. Writing-original draft: AF, SHA, GE. Writing-review & editing: all authors.
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