Assessment of Serum Vitamin D and Total Calcium Levels in COVID-‎‎19 Infected Patients and Their Relation to Disease Severity

Abstract

Background and study aim: COVID-19 is a highly contagious viral infection that was initially discovered in late 2019 in China. Vitamin D was proposed as a COVID-19 severity indicator by many authors.However, the role of hypocalcemia has not yet been well established. So we evaluated serum levels of vitamin D and total calcium in adult patients infected with COVID-19 and correlated vitamin D and calcium levels with the severity and prognosis of the COVID-19 infection. Patients and Methods:Our study evaluated 98 patients (50 females, 48 males) who were diagnosed with positive SARS-CoV-2 polymerase chain reaction. The patients were categorized into severe and non-severe COVID-19 based on the Egyptian protocol for the management of COVID-19 patients. Serum vitamin D and calcium levels were estimated in all patients. Results:In severe COVID-19 individuals, serum vitamin D levels were significantly lower (P = 0.04). However, there was no statistically significant change in serum calcium levels between severe and non-severe COVID-19 patients (P = 0.7) despite the high prevalence of hypocalcemia in our cohort (88%, 86/98). There was no statistically significant difference in the blood levels of both vitamin D and calcium between the improved group of patients and the death group (P = 0.5, 0.1 respectively). Conclusion:Vitamin D deficiency is a risk factor for disease progression and severity in COVID-19 patients. Hypocalcemia is not linked to COVID-19 severity despite its high prevalence in these patients. However, to back up these findings, more research with bigger sample size is required .