This study done in Isreal is looking at the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency. Example cardiovascular disease blood vessels. A large study of 34 000 people men and women the average level of vitamin D in women was only 22.7 nanograms per million in men it was 23.2 nanograms per ml. low prevalence of vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency was lower than 30 nanograms per mill. but 77 of women and 79 of men were below were deficient or we could certainly say below the optimum level.
so it's very common that younger and older people were both deficient in VitaminD.
They took two groups with vitamin D levels of less than 15 nanograms per ml and a group with vitamin D levels greater than 30. so they had two groups here one group is definitely low this less than 15 nanograms per ml and the other group here more than 30 so the sign of clear blue water between the two groups so they could do a comparison between the two groups and they found this was significant so anything less than p equals 0.05 is significant so this was significant age-adjusted odds ratio for the presence of and they found people with lower vitamin d had more high blood pressure more diabetes more dyslipidemia abnormal fats in the blood more obesity and more peripheral vascular disease not to say the causal but these were correlations that were discovered but there are other studies we could look at that does show there are at least
some causal components or we could argue strongly to some causal component but the reason i showed you that was this shows in Israel in the middle east that vitamin D deficiency is common.
This study established that vitamin D deficiency is of a high prevalence so that's it pre-infection 25 hydroxy vitamin D levels and association with severity of 19 illness so for a while we've known the potential correlation low vitamin D and increased risk of infection and poorer clinical outcomes so the lower the vitamin D levels the higher the risk of a bad clinical outcome and this study examines any relationship that exists between pre-infection 25 hydroxyvitamin D levels with disease severity
We can take everyone's vitamin D levels in hospital then we get an up-to-date assessment well the problem is that acute inflammatory conditions will use up vitamin D in the body and vitamin D levels will be lower so if you take someone who comes in with reasonably adequate vitamin D levels when they're very ill the vitamin D will be used up and the vitamin D levels will go down and then you'll get people arguing about cause and effect so you get sick of people with lower vitamin D levels but some people will say yeah they had low vitamin D levels but that's because they were sick the low vitamin D levels were caused by the illness. wherein actual fact this
study is demonstrating that it was low vitamin D levels that increased the severity out of the illness.
it's the other way to take levels before people became ill quite a clever sophisticated study.
list do stick with it it's really quite interesting so they took data from the 7th of April to February the 21st so that takes us all through the Wuhan strain. and it takes us through the alpha strain of which they had plenty in Israel and PCR tests used to confirm and then they searched for historical vitamin D levels 14 to 730 days prior to the infection so this eliminates the argument that people have been making when i had vitamin D debate with inspector he actually suggested this is a possibility that it's the illness that's lowering the vitamin D levels but this is showing that it's the vitamin D levels that are causing the illness or predisposing to the illness.
now the design patients were admitted were categorized by disease severity so disease severity and levels of
vitamin D deficiency was taken as less than 20 nanograms per mill there was 133 in that group insufficiency from 20 to 30 nanograms of vitamin d per ml of blood there was
36 in that group adequate was taken as 30 to 40 nanograms per ml of vitamin D there was 30 in that group
And high normal was taken as 40 nanograms or more and there were 40 in that group. there's a sinusoidal wave for vitamin D so it goes up in summer down in winter but they accounted for that hospital group 176 patients admitted and they got information on 253 who had prior recorded levels of vitamin D so they had quite a good number a lower vitamin D status was more common in patients with severe and critical disease that's a simple statement from the authors so we can say in this study this is true now this doesn't prove causality.
it is very convincing data in patients with severe critical
disease 87.4 percent of patients had less than 20 nanograms per ml of vitamin D in the blood in patients with the mild or moderate disease it was 34.3 had less than 20 nanograms so we see
that number is much higher than that number and when you take the difference between these two numbers into account you end up finding out the difference between those two numbers and the number of patients with these different numbers the probability of that arising by chance is one in a thousand p equals 0.001 or less than that so this is a definite significant difference patient there were more patients with the severe and critical disease more people with low vitamin D 87.4 severe and critical disease a significant difference between the groups clear blue water between those two groups. now patients with vitamin d deficiency less than 29 nanograms per meal are 14 times more likely to have a severe or critical illness odds ratio of 1495 confident intervals so compared to those with higher in higher vitamin D levels the highest vitamin d levels the14 times more likely to have a severe or critical illness so patients with the lowest vitamin D levels incredible 14 times more likely to have a severe illness the odds ratio was worked out at 14 as we said and they're 95 percent sure that that number of 14 was between 14 and 51 so it could 4 and 51 so would you like to reduce your risk of severe illness by a factor of 14 if your vitamin d levels are less than20 nanograms per mil then this would indicate that it is within the realms of possibility that increasing your vitamin d levels would
Also decrease that risk so that shows us what it was mortality in patients with sufficient sufficient vitamin d levels are 2.3
Percent of those patients time, of course, these are patients being admitted to the hospital anyway so these were the ill patients
Anyway mortality with patient mortality patient’s deficient vitamin D levels 25.6
so these patients were sufficient vitamin D levels 2.3 mortality these patients were deficient 25.6 mortality and again if you take that number and take that number and take into account the number of people in the groups and take into account the number the difference between those two numbers again the probability of that happening by a
Chance is less than one in a thousand really is quite
Convincing data. other statistical analysis as well as this the vitamin D levels here going up and the disease severity here getting worse as we go along from mild moderate-severe, critical, so there's a definite trend for people with lower vitamin D levels.
among hospitalized covered 19 patients pre-infection deficiency vitamin D was associated with increased disease severity and mortality is really a low vitamin D status has been associated with a range of autoimmune vascular and infectious diseases so the conclusion is amongst hospitalized patients with covering 19 pre-infection deficiency vitamin D was associated with increased disease severity and mortality now it's outside the realm of this study but there are many studies show that if you increase your vitamin D levels it has a very protective effect so that's basically the end of this study.
there's some more information here for those that want it so low vitamin D status has been associated with a range of autoimmune cardiovascular and infectious diseases as we've looked at and seen evidence, for now, this is because vitamin D is an essential immunological model moderator and it affects pro-inflammatory cytokines so the cytokines are chemicals produced by one set of cells particularly the white blood cells in fact, in this case, that cause and if there's too much of these, of course, you'll get a cytokine storm so it has an inhibitory effect on tissue necrosis factor-alpha
which is a pro-inflammatory mediator and
interleukin-6 which is a pro-inflammatory mediator
so adequate levels of vitamin D are both increasing the quality of the immune system but also reducing the likelihood of a cytokine storm and an excess inflammatory effect which of course is exactly what we want in covet 19 and indeed in anything we want the immune system to be working absolutely tip-top but we don't want it to go nuts and produce masses of cytokines that kill the patient as occurs in sepsis so epidemiological risk factors for vitamin D deficiency as we know darker
skin Low sun exposure skin covering clothes diets to some extent although by far most of the vitamin d we have comes from the sun this is the sunshine vitamin an association between low vitamin D
levels in the blood and increased risk of acquiring influenza
and respiratory viruses has been established I'm not going to give you all the information for this now they have established a very strong evidence meta-analysis of randomized controlled
trials 2007-2020 that low level of vitamin D is a risk factor. We need to optimize vitamin D levels and also take some vitamin K2 because vitamin k2 released more calcium in the blood. You should take a vitamin supplement and good diet and good sleep.
The k2 is an unusual vitamin in that the vitamin k2 is made bacterial fermentation this is made during fermentation reactions and fermentation is basically breaking things down in the absence of oxygen a chemist. The things are clear that to boost immunity by taking vitamin supplements in this running emergency.
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