Vitamin D, the new hope in war on coronavirus

HEALTH experts are urgently reviewing the use of vitamin D as a coronavirus lifesaver.

Studies suggest that Covid victims are far more likely to die if they are lacking the ‘sunshine’ nutrient.

One investigation – carried out by Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge – found European countries with lower vitamin D levels have had significantly more pandemic casualties.

The UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence is conducting a ‘rapid evidence review’ of the issue – and publication is expected as early as next week.

Experts fear that the lockdown and months of indoor living have cut vitamin D levels. Some ethnic groups tend to be at higher risk because their skin is less able to make the vitamin. Older people are also in danger because the body gets less efficient at producing the vitamin with age.

Public Health England is working with NICE on the review and has asked the UK Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition to carry out a separate report. A trial being led by Professor Adrian Martineau of Queen Mary University in London is investigating how certain lifestyle factors – including vitamin D levels – affect susceptibility to the virus.

‘Vitamin D could almost be thought of as a designer drug for helping the body to handle viral respiratory infections,’ he told The Guardian last night.

A review from the University of Surrey, which was published in the British Medical Journal last month, found that vitamin D should be seen as part of a healthy lifestyle but not as a ‘magic bullet’ – because the evidence was not yet clear.

Dr Lee Smith, who led Anglia Ruskin’s study, said: ‘It has been shown to protect against acute respiratory infections, and older adults, the group most deficient in vitamin D, are also the ones most seriously affected by Covid-19.

‘A previous study found that 75% of people in institutions, such as hospitals and care homes, were severely deficient in vitamin D.’

One study found that those with low levels of the nutrient had a 98.9% mortality rate. Yet this fell to just 4.1% for patients who had enough of it. But experts warned the Indonesian study was not definitive because the patients with high vitamin D were healthier and younger.