Vitamin D Likely Doesn’t Prevent COVID-19, Studies Find

The results from two large clinical trials don't support the idea that supplements of the vitamin bolster immune defenses against SARS-CoV-2.

Written byDan Robitzski

| 2 min read

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A surgical mask next to an open pill bottle that’s toppled over, spilling out red capsules meant to represent vitamin D supplements.

Image credit:© ISTOCK.COM, DEVASAHAYAM CHANDRA DHAS

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Vitamin D supplementation neither protects against SARS-CoV-2 infection nor reduces the severity of COVID-19, two clinical trials suggest, contradicting a hypothesis that arose early in the pandemic.

The studies were launched in 2020 based on previous findings that vitamin D seems to boost the immune system. Queen Mary University researcher David Martineau, a coinvestigator of one of the clinical trials, told The Scientist at the time that he hoped the results would carry over to the coronavirus that had only recently swept the globe. But the results of the trials, both published Wednesday (September 7) in BMJ, may put that idea to rest.

One of them, which ran from November 2020 to June 2021 and included 34,601 adult participants from Norway, tested a low dose of vitamin D (in the form of a cod liver oil supplement) and did not find any association between supplementation and the number of SARS-CoV-2 ...

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Meet the Author

Dan Robitzski
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Dan is an award-winning journalist based in Los Angeles who joined The Scientist as a reporter and editor in 2021. Ironically, Dan’s undergraduate degree and brief career in neuroscience inspired him to write about research rather than conduct it, culminating in him earning a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University in 2017. In 2018, an Undark feature Dan and colleagues began at NYU on a questionable drug approval decision at the FDA won first place in the student category of the Association of Health Care Journalists' Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. Now, Dan writes and edits stories on all aspects of the life sciences for the online news desk, and he oversees the “The Literature” and “Modus Operandi” sections of the monthly TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. Read more of his work at danrobitzski.com.
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