Daneshkhah A, Agrawal V, Eshein A, Subramanian H, Roy HK, Backman V. Evidence for possible association of vitamin D status with cytokine storm and unregulated inflammation in COVID-19 patients.
Aging Clin Exp Res 2020;
32:2141-2158. [PMID:
32876941 PMCID:
PMC7465887 DOI:
10.1007/s40520-020-01677-y]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 97] [Impact Index Per Article: 24.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/20/2020] [Accepted: 08/04/2020] [Indexed: 01/08/2023]
Abstract
OBJECTIVES
We present evidence for a possible role of Vitamin D (VitD) deficiency in unregulated cytokine production and inflammation leading to complications in COVID-19 patients.
DESIGN
The time-adjusted case mortality ratio (T-CMR) was estimated as the ratio of deceased patients on day N to the confirmed cases on day N-8. The adaptive average of T-CMR (A-CMR) was calculated as a metric of COVID-19 associated mortality. A model based on positivity change (PC) and an estimated prevalence of COVID-19 was used to determine countries with similar screening strategies. A possible association of A-CMR with the mean concentration of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) in elderly individuals in countries with similar screening strategy was investigated. We considered high C-reactive protein (CRP) in severe COVID-19 patients (CRP ≥ 1 mg/dL) as a surrogate of a cytokine storm. We considered high-sensitivity CRP (hs-CRP) in healthy subjects as hs-CRP ≥ 0.2 mg/dL.
RESULTS
A link between 25(OH)D and A-CMR in countries with similar screening strategy is evidence for VitD's possible role in reducing unregulated cytokine production and inflammation among patients with severe COVID-19. We observed an odds ratio (OR) of 1.8 with 95% confidence interval (95% CI) (1.2 to 2.6) and an OR of 1.9 with 95% CI (1.4 to 2.7) for hs-CRP in VitD deficient elderly from low-income families and high-income families, respectively. COVID-19 patient-level data show an OR of 3.4 with 95% CI (2.15 to 5.4) for high CRP in severe COVID-19 patients.
CONCLUSION
We conclude that future studies on VitD's role in reducing cytokine storm and COVID-19 mortality are warranted.
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