Is vitamin D deficiency associated with the COVID-19 epidemic in Europe?

Bakaloudi, D. R.; Chourdakis, M.

Objective: COVID-19 has emerged as a global pandemic, affecting nearly 80 million people from 218 countries as of December 2020. At the same time, vitamin D deficiency seems to be prevalent among COVID-19 patients. Hence, the association between the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency and COVID-19 infection and mortality among European countries was examined. Design: A case series and recent literature review study Settings: Information on prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in each country was retrieved through literature searching on PubMed database. As of December, 23rd 2020, COVID-19 infections and mortalities per million population were extracted from the Worldometer website, whereas the latitude of each country was taken from the CSGNetwork website. The association between both vitamin D deficiency and COVID-19 infection and mortality were explored using correlation coefficients and scatterplots. Participants: European Countries-Populations Results: The range of prevalence of vitamin D deficiency among European countries was 6.9-75.1%, with most countries facing more than 50% of vitamin D deficiency among their population. Significant positive correlations were observed between COVID-19 infections (r=0.82; p<0.001) and mortalities (r=0.53; p=0.05) per million population with the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency. Most of the high latitude countries showed lower rates of COVID-19 infections and mortalities compared to middle latitude countries. Conclusion: Prevalence of vitamin D deficiency was significantly associated with both infection and mortality rate of COVID-19 among European countries. Thus, it is an important parameter to be considered when implementing preventive measures to mitigate the mortality rate of COVID-19.