Revisiting the role of vitamin D levels in the prevention of COVID-19 infection and mortality in European countries post infections peak

Abstract

Various studies are underway to identify protective variables for the COVID-19 pandemic. We hypothesized that if indeed the vitamin D levels would be protective in the European population, as recently proposed, the correlation would become more robust when the countries had passed the infection peak as on May 12 2020, compared to April 8 2020, when the majority had not. Comparative analysis of data from the mentioned stages indicated a significant increase in negative correlation of vitamin D levels with COVID-19 cases per million population in later stage (r(20): -0.5504; R² = 0.3029; p value: 0.0119 vs r(20): -0.4435; R² = 0.1967; p value: 0.0501), whereas the correlation with deaths per million population became insignificant (r(20): -0.3935; R² = 0.1549; p value: 0.0860 vs r(20): -0.4378; R² = 0.1917; p value: 0.0535). Considering divergence of vitamin D levels from the mean in subgroups, e.g. children, women, aged, dedicated exploratory studies with carefully chosen matched target groups is advisable.

Keywords: COVID-19; Correlation; Europe; SARS-CoV-2; Vitamin D.

Fig 1.

Vitamin D serum levels negatively correlated with COVID-19 cases per milloin population (A) and deaths per million population (B). The correlation between vitamin D levels and cases per million population had improved by 12 May 2020 when all countries had passed the peak of current wave of COVID-19 infections as compared to that on 8th April 2020 (See Table 2 for comparison of the linear regression analysis results) when in most countries it had not peaked (as per https://www.worldometers.info/coronovirus/)