New Study Offers Strongest Proof Yet Of Vitamin D’s Power To Fight COVID
Chances are, you’re probably Vitamin D deficient. Most people are (I was a few years ago, but started taking supplements and have a better amount now), and an Israeli study says the D deficiency could increase the chance of having severe COVID symptoms:
Researchers from Bar Ilan University and the Galilee Medical Center say that the vitamin has such a strong impact on disease severity that they can predict how people would fare if infected based on nothing more than their ages and vitamin D levels.
Lacking vitamin D significantly increases danger levels, they concluded in newly peer-reviewed research published Thursday in the journal PLOS One.
The study is based on research conducted during Israel’s first two waves of the virus, before vaccines were widely available, and doctors emphasized that vitamin supplements were not a substitute for vaccines, but rather a way to keep immunity levels from falling.
Vitamin D deficiency is endemic across the Middle East, including in Israel, where nearly four in five people are low on the vitamin, according to one study from 2011. By taking supplements before infection, though, the researchers in the new Israeli study found that patients could avoid the worst effects of the disease.
[Times Of Israel: Israeli study offers strongest proof yet of vitamin D’s power to fight COVID]