Page 52 - Retail Pharmacy Assistants - November 2020

50 VITAMIN DEFICIENCIES FROM PAGE 49 Australian medical practitioners who is convinced of vitamin D’s benefits at this time, but there is political resistance to considering nutritional defences. “Vitamin D is clinically effective, with enough scientific evidence to support its use immediately, and it’s safe, cheap and available now,” he said. “A viable vaccine is not. For the sake of our most vulnerable, as well as the health of our economy, we cannot afford to dither any longer.” Megan Jensen, a clinical researcher and Accredited Practising Dietitian working in the Priority Research Centre for Healthy Lungs at the University of Newcastle, NSW, tells Retail Pharmacy Assistants that many questions would need to be answered before vitamin D could be used as an effective measure in the fight against Covid-19. “What are people’s starting levels?” she said “How much does an individual need, as this varies according to their life stages. Other factors among many that need to be considered include whether a person is obese, pregnant or in aged care, as this would affect the amount of vitamin D they’d require. “Aged care residents are most definitely at high risk for a vitamin D deficiency and that’s something that does need to be addressed. “But a whole lot of specific questions would have to be answered before a wide-scale administration of vitamin D could take place.” Mr Webster adds that the reason healthcare professionals often recommend vitamin D for the elderly is because they have less cholesterol in their skin. “Old people have less starting material to make vitamin D in their skin, so they’re likely to be lower in vitamin D in any case.” In general, vitamin D is well known to play in important role in the immune system, boosting the health of T cells and macrophages, which fight infection. An Italian study, ‘Vitamin D deficiency as a predictor of poor prognosis in patients with acute respiratory failure due to Covid-19’, discovered that after 10 days of hospitalisation, half of 42 patients with severe vitamin D deficiencies died, compared with just five per cent of patients who did not have severe deficiencies. Another study, ‘Vitamin D supplementation could possibly improve clinical outcomes of patients infected with Coronavirus-2019’, revealed a correlation between how high a Covid-19 patient’s vitamin D levels were and how likely they were to have a mild case of the illness. And a more recent study, ‘Association of vitamin D status and other clinical characteristics with Covid-19 test results’, by University of Chicago researchers and published in JAMA Network Open revealed higher rates of Covid-19 in people who were vitamin D deficient within the year before getting tested for coronavirus. According to this study, those who had been vitamin D deficient but were treated were less likely to test positive for Covid-19. The researchers looked at the link between vitamin D and Covid-19 in a predominantly (68 per cent) non-white group. In total, vitamin D levels measured in blood draws within the year before undergoing a coronavirus test were ‘likely deficient’ in 25 per cent of the study group of nearly 500 people, according to the research. Among the group who had plenty of vitamin D, 12 per cent tested positive for coronavirus. Nearly 20 per cent (19 per cent) of those who had low levels of vitamin D tested positive. RETAIL PHARMACY ASSISTANTS • NOV 2020