Increased risk for Covid-19 in patients with Vitamin D deficiency.

Katz, Joseph; Yue, Sijia; Xue, Wei

BACKGROUND: : The new Covid-19 pandemic has disproportionally affected a variety of patients with underlying risk factors such as respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, obesity, and African American race. Vitamin D deficiency that can result in compromised immune response has also been linked with increased risk and increased morbidities associated with Covid-19. In the absence of large scale longitudinal studies that can determine the strength of association between vitamin deficiency and Covid-19, cross sectional studies of large cohorts of patients can be used. MATERIAL AND METHODS: : We have used the i2b2 patient's registry platform at the University of Florida Health center to generate a count of patients using the ICD 10 diagnoses codes for the period of 10/1/2015 – 6/30/2020. Logistic regression of the aggregates was used for the analysis. RESULTS: : Patients with vitamin D deficiency were 4.6 times more likely to be Covid-19 positive, as indicated by a COV19 ICD 10 diagnostic code, than patients with no deficiency (P-value<0.001). The association decreased slightly after adjusting for gender (with OR=4.58, p<0.001) and for malabsorption (with OR=4.46, p<0.001) respectively. The association decreased significantly but remained robust with P-value<0.001 after adjusting for race (with OR=3.76, p<0.001), periodontal disease status (with OR=3.64, p<0.001), diabetes (with OR=3.28, p<0.001) and obesity (with OR=2.27, p<0.001), respectively. In addition, patients with vitamin D deficiency were 5 times more likely to be infected with Covid-19 than patients with no deficiency after adjusting for age groups (OR=5.155, p<0.001). CONCLUSION: Vitamin D deficiency is significantly associated with increased risk for Covid-19.