Long COVID & Vitamin D. Is this the Most Important Study Yet?
Long COVID affects 10-30% of people who got COVID and were not hospitalized. Most of the recent research is pointing to numbers more like 50-70%. It is well known that vitamin D helps prevent COVID. But can it also help prevent long COVID?
The answer, according to an important new study, is yes!
A new study matched 50 adults who had been hospitalized with COVID and had long COVID six months later with 50 adults who had been hospitalized with COVID but who did not have long COVID.
The results showed that those with long COVID had significantly lower levels of vitamin D than those who did not have long COVID, showing that vitamin D can also prevent long COVID.
When the researchers looked only at people who had vitamin D deficiency at the time of hospitalization and 6 months later, those who had long COVID had lower vitamin D levels than those who didn’t.
When the researchers looked at multiple characteristics, low levels of vitamin D were the only risk factor significantly and independently associated with risk of long COVID.
Lower levels of vitamin D were significantly more common in long COVID people with neurocognitive symptoms, headaches, weakness and taste disorders.
This important study provides the best evidence yet that vitamin D is not only key to preventing COVID and reducing the risk of severe COVID and death from COVID, but that it continues to be important after the acute phase of COVID by significantly lowering the risk of long COVID.
The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. 13 April 2023;dgad207:doi.org/10.1210/clinem/dgad207
