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. 2024 Mar 2;16(5):727.
doi: 10.3390/nu16050727.

The Association of Vitamin D Receptor Polymorphisms with COVID-19 Severity

Nikolaos Tentolouris  1 , Charoula Achilla  2 , Ioanna A Anastasiou  1 , Ioanna Eleftheriadou  1 , Anastasios Tentolouris  1 , Dimitrios Basoulis  1 , Ourania Kosta  1 , Alexandros Lambropoulos  2 , Maria P Yavropoulou  1 , Anthoula Chatzikyriakidou  2 , Edward B Jude  3   4   5
Affiliations

The Association of Vitamin D Receptor Polymorphisms with COVID-19 Severity

Nikolaos Tentolouris et al. Nutrients. .

Abstract

Background: Association studies of vitamin D receptor (VDR) polymorphisms with COVID-19 severity have produced inconsistent results in different populations. Herein we examined VDR gene polymorphisms in a Caucasian Greek cohort of COVID-19 patients.

Methods: This was a case-control study in a tertiary university hospital in Greece including 137 COVID-19 patients with varying disease severities and 72 healthy individuals. In total 209 individuals were genotyped for the FokI (rs10735810), ApaI (rs7975232), TaqI (rs731236) and BsmI (rs1544410) single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) of the VDR gene by polymerase chain reaction and restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis (PCR-RFLPs). Statistical analyses were performed to determine the association between genotype and disease severity, adjusting for various confounding factors.

Results: Genotype distribution of the studied VDR SNPs in the control group was in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. The TaqI variant was differentially distributed between controls and COVID-19 patients according to the additive model (p = 0.009), and the CC genotype was significantly associated with an increased risk for severe COVID-19 according to the recessive model [OR: 2.52, 95%CI:1.2-5.29, p = 0.01]. Multivariate analysis demonstrated a robust association of COVID-19 severity and TaqI polymorphism in the recessive model even after adjusting for multiple confounders, including age, sex and CRP levels [Adj.OR:3.23, 95%CI:1.17-8.86, p = 0.023]. The distribution of FokI, ApaI and BsmI genotypes was similar between COVID-19 patients and controls.

Conclusions: The CC genotype of TaqI polymorphism is significantly associated with an increased risk for severe COVID-19 independently of age, sex or degree of inflammation.

Keywords: COVID-19; Greek population; severity; vitamin D receptor polymorphisms.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow diagram of included COVID-19 patients.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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