Category: COVID19

A vitamin that makes the lung lining stronger against respiratory infection and prevents COVID-19.

Vitamin D can help combat respiratory infections including COVID-19, pneumonia and influenza, a study reveals.

Several clinical trials have suggested that individuals with vitamin D deficiency are 5 times more likely to experience severe COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and death.

Some studies have also found a strong association between higher serum levels of vitamin D and reduced likelihood of infection.

This study takes these further, providing evidence that higher vitamin D supplementation could help preventing respiratory infections.

The researchers observed that treatment with 50 nmol/L calcitriol, an active form of vitamin D, enhanced airway barrier function.

Calcitriol makes the lung lining stronger, reducing fluid leaks and lowering the inflammatory response to cell injury from bacteria, viruses, or toxic compounds.

This means the vitamin helps fend off viral or bacterial infections responsible for respiratory illnesses such as COVID pneumonia.

Professor James Mullin, the study’s senior author, said:

“Your body is mostly sacs and tubes.

If their linings are in good shape, you’re in good shape.

If they’re leaking and fail to provide a proper barrier, it’s a problem.

When you have a respiratory infection, that means the barrier in your lungs is leaking.

Our research gives evidence that vitamin D strengthens the barrier function of the lung lining, likely helping to prevent or stop an infection.”

For this study, the human lung tissue samples were examined.

They noticed that treatment with 50 nM calcitriol for 48 hours greatly improved barrier function of bronchial epithelial cells and decreased proinflammatory responses.

This indicates the potential effects of vitamin D supplementation on preventing cytokine storms in COVID-19 patients.

The inflammation caused by COVID-19 is known as a ‘cytokine storm’.

The ‘storm’ is an overaction of the immune system to try and kill the virus.

Professor Mullin said:

“The benefits, however, are so clear and the risks so minimal that we believe physicians should be recommending supplemental vitamin D right away.

Cytokine storms, where the body’s immune response kicks into overdrive and can result in severe disease and death in COVID, compromise the body’s airway barrier function.

We already know from past studies that vitamin D blunts cytokine storms in cases of flu.

In cases of COVID-19, vitamin D therapy may allow time for a patient’s own immune defenses to kick in before it’s too late.”

According to one study, adequate levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (30 nanogram per millilitre) protect patients with COVID-19 against complications and death, as well as reducing the risk of getting ill by a large amount.

The study was published in Physiological Reports (Rybakovsky et al., 2023).

Long COVID is more likely to be seen in those who have lower levels of this hormone.

Patients with low levels of vitamin D who had recovered from coronavirus are at greater risk of developing long COVID.

Post-COVID syndrome, also known as long COVID is a condition that affects some people after the initial illness.

These patients may experience health problems and wide-ranging symptoms that could last for more than 3 months.

Several studies suggest that the condition affects between 50 to 70 percent of hospitalised COVID-19 patients.

Some of these patients experience severe symptoms leading to intubation and mechanical ventilation.

Vitamin D deficiency has been suggested as a risk factor, but its impact on long COVID has not been checked before.

The study measured vitamin D levels in patients with COVID-19 at the beginning of their admission and 6 months after leaving hospital.

The results showed that patients with long COVID had lower levels of 25(OH) vitamin D than those who had fully recovered.

Lower 25(OH) vitamin D levels was observed more frequently in those patients with neurocognitive symptoms such as brain fog, confusion, poor concentration, and forgetfulness.

Professor Andrea Giustina, the study’s lead author, said:

“Previous studies on the role of vitamin D in long COVID were not conclusive mainly due to many confounding factors.

The highly-controlled nature of our study helps us better understand the role of vitamin D deficiency in long COVID, and establish that there is likely a link between vitamin D deficiency and long COVID.”

The next step for the research team is to find out whether vitamin D supplements can lower the odds of post COVID-19 syndrome.

Professor Giustina said:

“Our study shows that COVID-19 patients with low vitamin D levels are more likely to develop long COVID but it is not yet known whether vitamin D supplements could improve the symptoms or reduce this risk altogether.”

Related

• Brain fog, headache and numbness are the most common neurological symptoms of long COVID.
• Difficulties with memory and learning are signs of vitamin D deficiency.
• Vitamin D deficiency is linked to depressive symptoms and more negative thoughts.
• Long COVID: most common symptoms & time to recovery.

The study was published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (Filippo et al., 2023).

This long COVID symptom is in addition to difficulties with smell, taste, memory and speech.

COVID-19 can cause difficulties recognising people’s faces as well as with navigation, a study finds.

This can be added to the other commonly experienced neurological symptoms of so-called ‘long COVID’, the main three being brain fog, headaches and numbness.

Some people also continue to suffer difficulties with smell, taste, memory, speech and even psychosis after suffering from COVID.

Long COVID is when the symptoms from the novel coronavirus infection last longer than six weeks.

Face blind

Researchers worked with a woman called Annie who suffered from long COVID and was having problems with navigation and face recognition.

She was unable to recognise members of her only family by their faces alone and was having problems navigating to places that were extremely familiar to her.

Professor Brad Duchaine, study co-author, said:

“The combination of prosopagnosia [face blindness] and navigational deficits that Annie had is something that caught our attention because the two deficits often go hand in hand after somebody either has had brain damage or developmental deficits.

That co-occurrence is probably due to the two abilities depending on neighboring brain regions in the temporal lobe.”

A series of tests on Annie found she had great difficulty both with recognising well-known faces and in discriminating between learned faces and new ones.

Ms Marie-Luise Kieseler, the study’s first author, said:

“Our results from the test with unfamiliar faces show that it wasn’t just that Annie couldn’t recall the name or biographical information of a famous person that she was familiar with, but she really has trouble learning new identities.”

However, she had no difficulties with other related abilities, such as recognising voices.

Professor Duchaine said:

“It’s been known that there are broad cognitive problems that can be caused by COVID-19, but here we’re seeing severe and highly selective problems in Annie, and that suggests there might be a lot of other people who have quite severe and selective deficits following COVID.”

Cognitive deficits after COVID

To explore if these deficits might be widespread, the researchers surveyed over 50 people who had had long COVID and compared them with those who had had COVID but had fully recovered.

Ms Kieseler explained the results:

“Most respondents with long COVID reported that their cognitive and perceptual abilities had decreased since they had COVID, which was not surprising, but what was really fascinating was how many respondents reported deficits.

It was not just a small concentration of really impaired cases but a broad majority of people in the long COVID group reported noticeable difficulties doing things that they were able to do before contracting COVID-19 without any problems.”

Professor Duchaine said:

“One of the challenges that many respondents reported was a difficulty with visualizing family and friends, which is something that we often hear from prosopagnosics.”

Related

• Long COVID starves the brain of oxygen and triggers ‘brain fog’.
• Face blindness affects around 2% percent of people.

The study was published in the journal Cortex (Kieseler & Duchaine, 2023).

How long it takes to return to normal after mild COVID-19 infection.

While most people do not experience long-term illness after infection, some however suffer from long COVID.

According to a study, patients with mild COVID-19 will recover from lingering symptoms and return to normal life within one year.

Long COVID is a long-term health condition occurring after recovery from the initial infection with on and off symptoms such as dyspnea (shortness of breath), loss of smell, loss of taste, poor concentration, and fatigue.

Breathing difficulties

Breathing problems appear to be the most common symptom of long COVID which affects more unvaccinated people than vaccinated ones.

Since the coronavirus pandemic, the long COVID phenomenon has caused lots of anxiety and even fear in the population.

However, the research shows that the majority of patients with mild COVID infection will recover quickly showing no signs of serious illness or long term health conditions.

For instance, the number of long COVID patients in the UK is estimated at about 1.5 million, which is equivalent to 2.4 percent of the population.

Long COVID symptoms study

To analyse the outcomes of long COVID illness, researchers compared the health status of patients who had recovered from prolonged symptoms one year after infection with uninfected people.

They checked the medical data of 2.5 million Israelis and compared vaccinated patients with unvaccinated people with or without COVID infection.

Those seriously ill from coronavirus and patients with prior health conditions were excluded.

Other factors such as smoking, alcohol intake, and socioeconomic status were also taken into consideration as they could potentially influence the results.

During early and late periods of COVID-19 infection, patients were more likely to suffer from conditions such as breathing difficulties, dizziness, fatigue, loss of smell and taste, palpitations, poor concentration, and sore throat.

Patients were more likely to experience respiratory disorders, muscle aches, chest pain, hair loss, and cough during the early period of coronavirus disease.

People who had mild COVID-19 were nearly 5 times more likely to experience loss of smell and taste during the early phase and 3 times more likely in the late period.

Fatigue, shortness of breath, and sore throat were the most probable symptoms in patients with long COVID.

Vaccinated people who got sick with COVID-19 were less likely to experience breathing difficulty than unvaccinated patients but the risk of developing all other symptoms was similar in both groups.

The authors write that:

“Our study suggests that mild COVID-19 patients are at risk for a small number of health outcomes and most of them are resolved within a year from diagnosis.

Importantly, the risk for lingering dyspnea was reduced in vaccinated patients with breakthrough infection compared with unvaccinated people, while risks of all other outcomes were comparable.”

The study was published in The BMJ (Mizrahi et al., 2023).

Low levels of this vitamin is linked to a higher risk of COVID-19 infection and and hospitalisation.

The risk of contracting COVID-19 may be reduced by sufficient levels of vitamin D, research finds.

A large Israeli population-based study found a significant link between low blood levels of vitamin D and COVID-19 infection.

Low plasma 25(OH) vitamin D levels in COVID patients seem to be an independent risk factor for infection and hospitalisation.

Dr Eugene Merzon, the study’s first author, said:

“The main finding of our study was the significant association of low plasma vitamin D level with the likelihood of COVID-19 infection among patients who were tested for COVID-19, even after adjustment for age, gender, socio-economic status and chronic, mental and physical disorders.”

A blood level of 30 nanogram per millilitre 25(OH) vitamin D and higher has been shown to protect patients with COVID-19 against complications and death, as well as reducing the risk of getting ill.

Sufficient levels of vitamin D could halve the risk of catching coronavirus and save COVID-19 patients from the worst of the disease.

25-hydroxyvitamin D is produced in the liver and it is a major form of vitamin D3 and vitamin D2.

Past studies have suggested that low status of vitamin D increases the likelihood of respiratory tract infections.

Vitamin D is crucial for immediate immune response through adjusting white blood cell reactions and reducing their production of cytokines.

Dr Ilan Green, study co-author, said:

“Our finding is in agreement with the results of previous studies in the field.

Reduced risk of acute respiratory tract infection following vitamin D supplementation has been reported.”

Milana Frenkel-Morgenstern, study co-author, said:

“According to our analysis, persons that were COVID-19 positive were older than non-infected persons.

Interestingly, the two-peak distributions for age groups were demonstrated to confer increased risk for COVID-19: around ages 25 and 50 years old.

The first peak may be explained by high social gathering habits at the young age.

The peak at age 50 years may be explained by continued social habits, in conjunction with various chronic diseases.”

Data analysis across 20 countries in Europe suggests that a large number of COVID-19 cases and high death rates could be related to vitamin D deficiency.

Besides being important for the immune system, vitamin D is a key factor in many physiological processes such as bone growth and calcium absorption.

Vitamin D deficiency has been related to cognitive decline, autoimmune conditions, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and obesity.

A study points out that vitamin D is a seasonal vitamin and so emphasises the need for vitamin D intake in winter.

Exposure to the sun for even 15 minutes daily can give the body a chance to make enough vitamin D.

Vitamin D is found in foods such as oily fish including salmon, trout, mackerel, and sardines, eggs, liver, and some fortified foods including diary.

The study was published in The FEBS Journal (Merzon et al., 2020).