Endocrinologist Giustina: “Covid patients have severe vitamin D deficiency”

“In the last 2 years we have been shocked by a pandemic that was mainly a respiratory infection. One month after the first case in Italy of Sars-CoV-2 infection, a letter from me in the ‘British Medical Journal’ speculated that the great involvement of our country could also be linked to vitamin D deficiency. 2 years have passed since then and I am proud to say that that intuition has had more and more weight in the international community over time. Today it is an established fact that patients hospitalized with Covid have a huge prevalence of low vitamin D “. So Andrea Giustina, head of endocrinology at the Irccs San Raffaele Hospital in Milan and scientific coordinator of the Consensus of the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, on the occasion of the VI International Consensus on Vitamin D, scheduled in Florence in these days, of which he is coordinator. The event brings together over 30 of the world’s leading vitamin D experts. “Having a low vitamin D could also predispose to Sars-CoV-2 infection, but above all to a serious infection, therefore to Covid-19 – he argues Giustina – The data in this sense are still in a stabilizing phase, we need to understand if this low vitamin D is a cause or a contributing cause of Covid. The scientific community is working on this point, but I am confident that the data we are collecting is also at San Raffaele are important in order to be able to give an answer as well as on the other issue: to give vitamin D before having the infection or as a therapy within a therapeutic scheme for serious illness? My position is clear: it is better to intervene first that the problem arrives, but I do not exclude that low vitamin D is a contributing factor, a predisposing factor to develop Covid in the severe form, just as I do not exclude that even the use of vitamin D in a more acute patient can find play a role. The studies published so far are not entirely univocal, but we must understand how when and why to give vitamin D. I believe that in the near future we will have answers in this sense too. “According to the expert, even overweight patients are at risk of having a low vitamin D. “Overweight patients who undergo surgery to reduce obesity, a technique that is now more and more frequent and more and more effective, especially in centers of excellence – underlines Giustina – are at risk of having a worsening of this state of vitamin D deficiency “. Therefore” it is essential that surgeons and specialists dealing with obesity give the right indications to protect patients before and after surgery which has great positive effects on weight and metabolism, but which determines often of malabsorption with which we have to deal for the quality of life of patients even many years after surgery “.