{"id":12985,"date":"2025-07-30T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=12985"},"modified":"2025-07-28T12:23:51","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T16:23:51","slug":"low-vitamin-d-increases-risk-for-severe-covid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=12985","title":{"rendered":"Low Vitamin D Increases Risk for Severe COVID"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Low vitamin D levels might increase a person\u2019s odds of a severe bout with&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.healthday.com\/a-to-z-health\/public-health\/covid-2665435130.html\">COVID-19<\/a>, a new study says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>People with a vitamin D deficiency are 36% more likely to require hospitalization from a COVID infection, researchers report in the journal&nbsp;<em><a href=\"https:\/\/journals.plos.org\/plosone\/article?id=10.1371\/journal.pone.0328232\">PLOS One<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cVitamin D plays a key role in regulating the immune system, so it\u2019s plausible that low levels may influence how the body responds to infections like COVID-19,\u201d investigator&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/people.unisa.edu.au\/kerri.beckmann\">Kerri Beckmann<\/a>, a senior research fellow at the University of South Australia, said in a news release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, the study also found no increased risk of COVID infection among people with low vitamin D levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOur study found that people with a vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency were more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than those with healthy levels of Vitamin D \u2013 but they weren\u2019t more likely to catch the virus in the first place,\u201d Beckmann said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>About 1 in 5 (22%) of Americans are vitamin D deficient, according to a 2022&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/articles\/PMC9573946\/\">study<\/a>&nbsp;published in&nbsp;<em>Frontiers in Nutrition<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For the study, researchers analyzed data from more than 150,000 people participating in UK Biobank, a long-range study of health in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The team looked at the risk COVID poses among people who are either fully vitamin D deficient or have insufficient levels of the vitamin and compared it to risk seen among their counterparts who have normal levels of vitamin D.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Results indicate that vitamin D levels could contribute to better COVID outcomes, in much the same way that vaccine boosters play a role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cCOVID-19 may not be the threat it once was, but it still affects peoples\u2019 well-being,\u201d Beckmann said. \u201cUnderstanding who is most at risk helps those individuals take extra precautions, including monitoring their vitamin D levels.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It could be that people who are in poor health to begin with may also have low vitamin D levels, she notd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSo, at this stage, we don\u2019t know whether vitamin D supplements in themselves could reduce the severity of COVID-19,\u201d Beckmann continued.&nbsp;&nbsp;\u201cIt\u2019s certainly an area worth exploring \u2013 especially as we continue to live with the virus.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Low vitamin D levels might increase a person\u2019s odds of a severe bout with&nbsp;COVID-19, a new study says. People with a vitamin D deficiency are 36% more likely to require [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,289,636],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hospitalizations","category-long-haul-disease","category-vitamin-d"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12985"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12986,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12985\/revisions\/12986"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}