Association of Serum Vitamin D level and COVID-19 infection: A Case-control Study

Najat Abdrabbo AlYafei; Bushra Naaz Fathima Jaleel; Abdel-Salam G Abdel-Salam; Hamda Ali Al-Saadi; Samya Ahmad Al Abdulla

doi:10.5339/qmj.2022.48

Association of Serum Vitamin D level and COVID-19 infection: A Case-control Study

Qatar Med J. 2022 Dec 5;2022(4):48. doi: 10.5339/qmj.2022.48. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Najat Abdrabbo AlYafei¹, Bushra Naaz Fathima Jaleel¹, Abdel-Salam G Abdel-Salam², Hamda Ali Al-Saadi¹, Samya Ahmad Al Abdulla¹

Affiliations

¹ Primary Health Care Corporation, Qatar. Email & ORCID ID: nalyafei@phcc.gov.qa & https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8071-3646.
² Department of Mathmatics, Statistics and Physics, College of Art and Sciences, Qatar unitversity, Doha, Box. 2713, Qatar.

Abstract

Background: Vitamin D is considered a potent modulator of the immune system, albeit its role in COVID-19 infection is a matter of debate. The present study aimed to estimate the association between serum vitamin D levels and COVID-19 among people in Qatar.

Methods: This case-control study, approved by the Institutional Review Board of Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) Qatar, retrospectively evaluated the principal public healthcare sector population data repository retrieved from the cloud-based Electronic Health Record (EHR) software-Cerner, during April 2020-2021. The health records of all adult patients aged >18 years who had undergone the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test and whose medical records had documented serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25 (OH)D] levels were analyzed.

Results: A total of 924,173 EHRs were extracted, of which 62,451 EHR comprised of 16,446 (26.3%) COVID-19 patients and 46,005 (73.7%) negative-control group patients met the inclusion criteria. The odds ratio (OR) among different categories of vitamin D deficiency (VDD) revealed that people with mild/moderate VDD were 1.18 times (95% CI 1.126-1.258) and those with severe VDD were 1.90 times (95% CI 1.116-1.251) more likely to have COVID-19 infection when compared to the people with optimal serum vitamin D level. On applying multiple logistic regression, the odds of having COVID-19 infection were found to be 1.27 times (95% CI 1.184-1.371) higher among those with mild/moderate VDD and 1.32 times (95% CI 1.206-1.405) higher among those with severe VDD when compared to people with optimal vitamin D level (p < 0.001).

Conclusion: Our findings demonstrated a significant association between the suboptimal serum vitamin D level and COVID-19 infection. Further studies are required to determine the effects of VDD on the severity and outcomes of COVID-19 infections.

Keywords: COVID-19; Qatar; RT-PCR; SARS-CoV-2; Serum 25(OH)D; Vitamin D Deficiency.