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No evidence that vitamin D is able to prevent or affect the severity of COVID-19 in individuals with European ancestry: a Mendelian randomisation study of open data

BACKGROUND: Upper respiratory tract infections are reportedly more frequent and more severe in individuals with lower vitamin D levels. Based on these findings, it has been suggested that vitamin D can prevent or reduce the severity of COVID-19. METHODS: We used two-sample Mendelian randomisation (M...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Amin, Hasnat A, Drenos, Fotios
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BMJ Publishing Group 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7798425/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34308111
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjnph-2020-000151
Descripción
Sumario:BACKGROUND: Upper respiratory tract infections are reportedly more frequent and more severe in individuals with lower vitamin D levels. Based on these findings, it has been suggested that vitamin D can prevent or reduce the severity of COVID-19. METHODS: We used two-sample Mendelian randomisation (MR) to assess the causal effect of vitamin D levels on SARS-CoV-2 infection risk and COVID-19 severity using publicly available data. We also carried out a genome-wide association analysis (GWA) of vitamin D deficiency in the UK Biobank (UKB) and used these results and two-sample MR to assess the causal effect of vitamin D deficiency on SARS-CoV-2 infection risk and COVID-19 severity. RESULTS: We found no evidence that vitamin D levels causally affect the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection (ln(OR)=0.17 (95% CI −0.22 to 0.57, p=0.39)) nor did we find evidence that vitamin D levels causally affect COVID-19 severity (ln(OR)=0.36 (95% CI −0.89 to 1.61, p=0.57)). Based on our GWA analysis, we found that 17 independent variants are associated with vitamin D deficiency in the UKB. Using these variants as instruments for our two-sample MR analyses, we found no evidence that vitamin D deficiency causally affects the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection (ln(OR)=−0.04 (95% CI −0.1 to 0.03, p=0.25)) nor did we find evidence that vitamin D deficiency causally affects COVID-19 severity (ln(OR)=−0.24 (95% CI −0.55 to 0.08, p=0.14)). CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, we found no evidence that vitamin D is protective against SARS-CoV-2 infection or COVID-19 severity. Our data support the recent statement by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence that the use of vitamin D supplementation to mitigate COVID-19 is not supported by the available data.