COVID-19: Vitamin D may be able to 'switch off' lung inflammation - Medical News Today

Scientists are sharing insight into how vitamin D could help in severe COVID-19 cases by revealing how the vitamin functions to reduce hyper-inflammation caused by immune cells.

A new joint study by Purdue University and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) demonstrates how an active metabolite of vitamin D — not a form sold OTC — is involved in “switching off” inflammation in the body during infections such as COVID-19.

“Since inflammation in severe cases of COVID-19 is a key reason for morbidity and mortality, we decided to take a closer look at lung cells from COVID-19 patients,” said lead authors Dr.

T cells are known to play a role in severe and dangerous cases of COVID-19 by going into overdrive and leading to an often fatal phenomenon known as a cytokine storm.

“As expected, by studying which genes were ‘switched on’ in the immune cells from the lungs of eight patients, we found that their cells were in an inflammatory state,” said the co-authors.

We found that T cells had a self-contained system to both fully activate and respond to vitamin D, independently of the kidneys,” they said.

The researchers hypothesized that adding a highly concentrated intravenous vitamin D metabolite to existing treatments could further help people recover from COVID-19.

Previous studies establish links between vitamin D’s ability to reduce the inflammation caused by T cells and the severity of COVID-19.

“[I]t’s crucially important to note that this study did not test vitamin D treatment in people but analyzed lung cells from eight people who had severe COVID-19,” said Dr.

Even more, the mechanism for how vitamin D affects COVID-19 is still unknown,” he said.

Alcendor said that even though vitamin D is known to have immune-modulatory functions, it does not justify its use as a protective measure against COVID-19 infection, especially if one ignores COVID-19 mitigation practices.

The study suggests that vitamin D could be a therapeutic option for COVID-19 thanks to its role in hyper-inflammation.

“This study reveals a potentially unique role that vitamin D plays in the activation of T-cell functions that regulate inflammation in COVID-19, and understanding these regulatory pathways may provide information that will lead to the development of novel therapies for the treatment of acute COVID-19,” said Dr.

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