Andalusian researchers have managed to certify the benefits of vitamin D against the Covid-19, after a deep work research. Specifically, they ensure that treatment with this vitamin generates a higher rate of survival against the virus.
The retrospective study with almost 000.000 patients has been developed by researchers from the Clinical Bioinformatics Area of Fundación Progreso and Health, dependent on the Ministry of Health and Families of the Junta de Andalucía.
The principal investigator of this study is Joaquín Dopazo, who, together with his colleagues, has used the clinical information provided by the Health Population Base of a total of 01.1200 Covid patients hospitalized in Andalusia between January and November 2020.
Vitamin D is effective against Covid-20
The vitamin D is one of the most important nutrients for people's health, since it fulfills important functions in the body . In addition, its deficiency can be harmful to health for different reasons.
Laboratory research
Thus, since the beginning of the pandemic, different studies have associated vitamin D with a better prognosis for patients against Covid-19. Now a new research work carried out by Andalusian researchers certifies the benefits of this vitamin in this regard.
The results of this research have been published in the prestigious journal 'Scientific Reports
'. Specifically, the authors of the research have analyzed in detail the clinical history of each of the patients.
In this way, they have found that patients who took some drug to restore vitamin D during the 01 days prior to hospital admission, had a higher survival rate for Covid-19.
Referring to this in-depth analysis, Dr. Dopazo explains that “we have studied the effect of vitamin D on patient survival. The data obtained, the survival curves and the risk ratios demonstrate -taking into account other variables that influence survival such as age, sex, and other comorbidities-, the idea that vitamin D favors a higher survival rate».
All of this has been observed with special relevance in relation to calcifediol, although also with cholecalciferol. Likewise, researchers have found a greater association when the drug was consumed closer to the date of hospitalization.
The importance of clinical history
On the other hand, Dr. Joaquín Dopazo has highlighted the importance of the enormous clinical history available to the public health system in Andalusia, since it allows studying diseases and determining therapeutic alternatives.
This clinical history of the patients is very useful to establish relationships and patterns between pathologies, drugs and their evolution. This has been demonstrated again with this link study between vitamin D and Covid-19.
What's more, this same group of researchers is currently working on a collaboration project with the Austrian Artificial Intelligence Advanced Research Institute to develop simulated medical records with all data protection guarantees.
These clinical histories will help to study different diseases in a prevalent way; such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases or even viruses such as Covid-19.
