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REVIEW article

Front. Nutr.
Sec. Clinical Nutrition
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2024.1461485
This article is part of the Research Topic Vitamin D: From Pathophysiology to Clinical Impact Volume II View all 22 articles

A Narrative review focusing on randomized clinical trials (RCTs) of vitamin D supplementation for COVID-19 disease

Provisionally accepted
Limi Huang Limi Huang 1*Zhiwei Song Zhiwei Song 2
  • 1 First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China
  • 2 Xianju County People's Hospital, Taizhou, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Current evidence is inconsistent on whether vitamin D supplementation can prevent COVID-19 infection or improve its clinical outcomes. To better understand and look into the issue, we went through the background knowledge of COVID-19 and vitamin D, searched in Pubmed [by using key words in the title containing 'randomized clinical trial ', or cholecalciferol, or calcidiol, or calcifediol) supplementation'] for publications of studies on vitamin D/supplementation in COVID-19 patients, especially those about the randomized clinical trials (RCTs). After reviewing these papers, we did a short background review of vitamin D and the pathophysiology of COVID-19, summarized the key features of the 25 RCTs in text and tabulated in a table of some of the features, commented, compared and discussed the differences between RCTs (for example, change the serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentration from nmol/L to ng/mL, making the comparison easier). The take-home question of the review is that serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentration is an important indicator of the supplementation effect of vitamin D correction but may not be reliable in predicting the supplementation effect on the clinical outcomes of COVID-19.

    Keywords: randomized clinical trial, Vitamin D, Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), COVID-19, Serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D

    Received: 08 Jul 2024; Accepted: 01 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Huang and Song. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Limi Huang, First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.