Serum vitamin D level in COVID-19 patients and its correlation with disease severity
Caroline S Morad, Reem A Habeeb, Esraa T Yassin, Salma A Khalil
Egyptian Rheumatology and Rehabilitation, doi:10.1186/s43166-022-00155-9
Background: Severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infections are associated with increased levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) and several pro-inflammatory cytokines leading to cytokine storm. Vitamin D has been proved to be associated with biological activities of the innate and adaptive immune systems. There is a growing number of data showing an association between serum vitamin D level and the different clinical outcomes of COVID-19 infection. Our aim is to evaluate the relation between serum vitamin D levels and the severity and mortality of COVID-19 infection in an Egyptian cohort.
Results: The study included 80 COVID-19 patients, 38 males (47.5%) and 42 females (52.5%), with a mean age of 52 ± 11.4 years (18-80 years). The serum vitamin D levels ranged between 2 and 30 ng/mL with a mean of 12.05 ± 9.04. Patients who were intubated had the lowest levels of serum vitamin D (7.26 ng/ml ± 5.21), while patients who had no need for oxygen supply had the highest levels (20.00 ng/ml ± 9.23) (P = 0.025). A highly significant negative correlation was found between serum vitamin D level and each of CRP and serum ferritin (r = − 0.346 and − 0.313) (P = 0.002 and 0.005). Of the enrolled 80 patients, 63 (79%) recovered (group 1) and 17 (21%) died (group 2). Group 2 had significantly lower vitamin D levels (6.17 ng/mL ± 3.22) and hemoglobin (10.75 ± 1.74) than group 1 patients (13.63ng/mL ± 9.46) (12.10 ± 1.85) (P = 0.002 and 0.009 respectively).
Conclusion: Serum vitamin D levels are significantly lower in patients needing mechanical ventilation, and in deceased patients, and are inversely related to the inflammatory markers CRP and serum ferritin, suggesting a relation between vitamin D insufficiency and poor COVID-19 outcome.
Abbreviations
Declarations Ethics approval and consent to participate The study was approved by the Ain Shams University, Faculty of Medicine Research Ethics Committee (REC) FWA 000017585. An informed written consent was taken from patients enrolled in the study.
Consent for publication Not applicable.
Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Publisher's Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
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