The First Clinical Trial to Support Vitamin D Therapy For Covid-19
[Updated 27 Sept] Oral calcifediol reduced ICU admission for Covid-19 from 50% to 2%. And key questions about the trial answered.
A study from Spain finally presents the first clinical evidence for the use of vitamin D to treat Covid-19. The study, “Effect of Calcifediol Treatment and best Available Therapy versus best Available Therapy on Intensive Care Unit Admission and Mortality Among Patients Hospitalized for COVID-19: A Pilot Randomized Clinical study,” was published in The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology on 29 August. It is called a pilot because the sample size is small, but its randomization and prospective design still make it a robust research.
What the study did and found
Researchers randomly allocated 76 cases of Covid-19 into oral calcifediol (50 patients) or no-calcifediol control (26 patients) groups on the day of the hospital admission. Oral calcifediol was given at high doses at 0.532 mg on the first day and then at 0.266 mg on the third and seventh day, and then weekly until discharge or admission to the intensive care unit (ICU).
Calcifediol, also called 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 (vitamin D3), is the main metabolite…
