Vaccines, Vit D and Variants

[LemonSwan]

I am obviously missing something here because I was just comparing Vit D deficiency of COVID patients (over 80% of hospitalisations) with efficacy of vaccines in reducing hospitalisations..

*Its hard to track down the exact figures as they are changing them all the time. But heres what I have:
Pfizer 52% (1st dose) going to 95% (2nd)
Oxford 70% going to 80-90%
Novavax 89% after two.
J&J single shot 66%

Now we have the SA variant which is messing up the efficacy.
Oxford 10%
Novavax 60%
Pfizer - 'Very modest difference' - SA variant not an issue.

If the virus keeps mutating (which it seems hell bent on doing) then would if have been more effective for everyone to just take vit D tablets and why has this not been pushed more by the Gov. Theres tonnes of papers on this and I haven't heard a peep about it from GOV/NHS - to the point where when I bring up taking Vit D I feel like a conspiracy theorist or a pseudoscientist.

It seems such an obvious solution that I am either being mad or have utterly missed the point. Some one please let me know

Look, we’re just going to have to wait for it to go through the process.

I just wanted to say the people critiquing it on Twitter are not “random tweeters” , they are other scientists.

One writes for the Guardian as well as working at Western Sydney Uni. From the Guardian:
Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz is an epidemiologist working in chronic disease in Sydney’s west, with a particular focus on the social determinants that control our health. He writes a regular health blog covering science communication, public health, and what that new study you've read about actually means.

Another is a lecturer and medical statistician working at the clinical research facility. From NUI Galway:
I am an applied statistician with a wide range of methodological interests; in particular the design and analysis of clinical trials, multilevel modelling of clustered and longitudinal data, along with other applied research interests in causal inference in observational studies, survey techniques and missing data.

Another is the Director of the clinical and translational research accelerator at Yale.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I don’t doubt that the medical professionals and academics conducting the trials are excellent and would have been conducting this research under extremely difficult circumstances. It does seem plausible to me that VitD has benefit and there are many studies pointing in that direction. There’s a lot of evidence mounting.

Many excellent scientists do indeed tweet a lot. It’s been especially noticeable for epidemiologists. It’s another way that open science and sharing through technology has accelerated during the pandemic.

Oops, cross posted CherryBlossomOsaka !!!

I started that post over an hour ago and got distracted

Ah I’m glad they’re taking their time to go through the process. A year in to a global pandemic with huge death rates. Time is definitely one thing we have.

How awful will it be in a few years if we look back and found this could have actually made a different to saving lives.

we should be very interested in its use as a treatment. My advice to anyone who gets covid and has been taking a small supplement is always to double what they have been taking. And if they havent been taking a supplement to take anything that will give them vitamin D, oily fish, eggs and mushroom if they dont have supplements.

This is NOT a substitute for vaccination. I do know one (BAME) person who was quite ill with covid (although not needing to be admitted) and they were taking a supplement.

It's definitely worth checking levels. My friend works outside 6 days a week 8am - 6pm and was still deficient
I took my 20,000 today, hoping it gets my levels up soon

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1361327090520489988.html

This is Chris van Tullekin’s take and I don’t think anyone can claim he is just some “random bloke on Twitter”.

He says
“ This is not an important study. Neither its findings nor its methods are clear. It is flawed to the point where it has no use. ”

There is a very good reason we do regulated clinical trials and them peer review them.

everything Thats still the same thing said upthread though. Yes its a pointless study with regard to Vit D being given as a treatment but its not a pointless study when you compare good baseline Vit D + Vit D treatment vs poor Vit D baseline. Sure its not what they were intending to support but it is supporting our theory on this thread that baseline Vit D is significant to outcomes.

The pre-print has been removed from The Lancet website for now:

We have removed this preprint due to concerns about the description of the research in this paper. This has led us to initiate an investigation into this study.

The comments that have been posted on this preprint will remain available on this page. Please note that this comment thread is now closed to further posts.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3771318

The paper is badly in need of clarification about its methods and I look forward to it being reposted with better information about its methods, trial design, the data collection, analysis, and appropriate statistics (amongst other concerns).

Lemonswan

“its not a pointless study when you compare good baseline Vit D + Vit D treatment vs poor Vit D baseline.“

How did they show that?

Everything I thought that was the issue. That they assigned wards and the ward with the better outcome was filled with people with a better initial level of Vit D.

DH has MS so takes a large dose of Vit D daily. We also make sure our DDs take their supplements daily. I have been taking Vit D and soluble Vit C for a few months. It does make me feel like I’m doing something to help myself

Lemon

You can’t infer anything from that. (To be honest you can’t infer anything from the whole study, there’s such a lot missing, problems with methodology etc. The study authors have already conceded this was not a randomised controlled study but an observational study.)

It is correlation not causality. There are many reasons the two arms might have had different outcomes (either linked to baseline VitD or not).

even if the rest of the study was run well (which it wasn’t), you can’t infer things that are not the purpose of the study. They are not powered for, the groups were not selected on that basis, it’s the wrong population, confounders are not accounted for and there may be no statistically significant difference as they haven’t done stats for that.

Hi , does vit D need to be taken with K2 I’ve read on different posts that taken on it’s on over a long period of time can calcify

@Applejack87

Hi , does vit D need to be taken with K2 I’ve read on different posts that taken on it’s on over a long period of time can calcify

Enquiries like this highlight the underlying flaw in the argument of everyone who announce that 'vitamin D' is cheap/harmless etc. In no time at all, there are always those who specify: the specific type of vitamin D and its bioavailability (relates to what is being measured in vitamin D tests and the assay used); that it must be taken with magnesium (in optimum forms and doses), potassium (ditto), vitamin K2 etc. And it's usual for people to then recommend an additional array of supplements.

Applejack87 - you might be interested to look at Table 1 in this paper:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7406600/]]

You can read more papers that are returned with a very basic search here (it will be easier if you add in an additional filter for 'humans' from the lefthand menu): pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=vitamin+d+k2

Vitamin D randomised trials for respiratory viruses have already been peer reviewed and published years ago.

Here's a British one from 2019 - pre-covid. It covers many respiratory viruses:

Results: We identified 25 eligible RCTs (a total of 11,321 participants, aged from 0 to 95 years.)

Vitamin D supplementation reduced the risk of ARI among all participants.

Vitamin D supplementation was safe, and it protected against ARIs overall. Very deficient individuals and those not receiving bolus doses experienced the benefit.

Scientists have already proved that increasing our vitamin d3 serum increase our protection against severe outcomes from respiratory viruses - it's not really such a big deal.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30675873/

Completely anecdotal, but I take 5000 iu a day and live in Los Angeles and spend time outdoors. My VitD levels are just in the sweet spot. My dd (18 and living out of the home) has not been taking her vitamin D and her levels came back extremely low. DD got Covid last month and gave it to me. DD was pretty ill and I was completely asymptomatic. Maybe coincidence, but according to my father who has written several papers on Vitamin D, definitely not coincidental.

Current issue of Nutrients Journal all about Vitamin D and direct link to my father's paper in this issue on Vitamin D.

Thats really interesting Sofia. Thanks for sharing.

As your dad believes this Vit D issue is significant - does he ever say why he thinks it is not being pushed more in public messaging?

I think it should be up there with hands, mask, social distance

Yep we all use a vitamin D spray off Amazon

My father doesn't have much respect for the government, so if anything goes wrong "they" get the blame....doesn't really matter what the "government's" politics is.

This is really interesting...

Of course Vit D doesn't cure covid or replace the vaccine, but what is the harm in taking it? I have believed for a while that Vit D supports your immune system. I took it last winter and I was the only one out of 6 of us in the office to escape the really bad cold that was going round.

I have also had honey and lemon drinks for years now and fended off office winter bugs. I now make sure I eat more ginger, cinnamon, turmeric and spinach, and I drink a little bit less. I do believe it helps, but even if not, what's the harm?

I am also convinced that part of the reason people with darker skin who are living in the UK and similar countries are more vulnerable to the virus is because they cannot absorb as much vitamin D.

There is not much we can do to protect ourselves from this, so anything we can do to help ourselves is good.