Can understanding vitamin D deficiency and supplementation inform efforts to reduce the incidence and burden of COVID-19 and future pandemics?

David Meltzer, Ph.D.
The University of Chicago

Robert Gibbons, Ph.D.
The University of Chicago

ABSTRACT:
Vitamin D is a hormone that has well known roles in bone health and lesser appreciated and well understood roles in the immune system. This talk will review existing evidence on the role of vitamin D in affecting the immune system with a focus on its role in viral respiratory infections and COVID-19 in particular. The talk will review new findings from several observational analyses examining the association of vitamin D with COVID-19 risk and influenza risk. It will also describe early findings and rationale for 3 clinical studies of vitamin D and COVID-19 risk that are now in progress.