The effect of vitamin D supplementation on mortality and intensive care unit admission of COVID‐19 patients. A systematic review, meta‐analysis and meta‐regression
Nikolaos Tentolouris, Georgia Samakidou, Ioanna Eleftheriadou, Anastasios Tentolouris, Edward B Jude
Diabetes/Metabolism Research and Reviews, doi:10.1002/dmrr.3517
Aims: The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to investigate the effect of vitamin D supplementation on mortality and admission to intensive care unit (ICU) of COVID-19 patients.
Methods : A systematic search of PubMed, Google Scholar, Embase, Web of Science and medRxiv with terms relative to vitamin D supplementation and COVID-19 was conducted on 26 March 2021. Comprehensive Meta-Analysis software was used for the quantitative assessment of data and random-effects model was applied. To investigate the association between the dose of vitamin D and the outcomes of interest, meta-regression analysis was performed. Results: Two thousand and seventy-eight patients from nine studies with data on mortality were included (583 received vitamin D supplementation, while 1495 did not). Sixty-one (10.46%) individuals in the treated group died, compared to 386 (25.81%) in the non-treated group (odds ratio [OR]: 0.597; 95% CI: 0.318-1.121; p = 0.109). Eight hundred and sixty patients from six studies with data on ICU admission were included (369 received vitamin D supplementation, while 491 did not). Forty-five (12.19%) individuals in the treated group were admitted to ICU, compared to 129 (26.27%) in the non-treated group (OR: 0.326; 95% CI: 0.149-0.712; p = 0.005). No significant linear relationship between vitamin D dose and log OR of mortality or log OR of ICU admission was observed. Conclusion: This meta-analysis indicates a beneficial role of vitamin D supplementation on ICU admission, but not on mortality, of COVID-19 patients. Further research is urgently needed to understand the benefit of vitamin D in COVID-19.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST The authors declare they have no conflict of interest.
ETHICS STATEMENT This study did not involve human participants or animal research. This work was based on already produced and published data.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS Georgia Samakidou and Ioanna Eleftheriadou determined the search strategy, screened the selected studies and extracted the data. Nikolaos Tentolouris and Anastasios Tentolouris performed the statistical analysis. All authors participated in the writing and revision of this paper. All authors have read and approved this final manuscript.
SUPPORTING INFORMATION Additional supporting information may be found in the online version of the article at the publisher's website.
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