Vitamin D supplementation, COVID-19 and disease severity: a meta-analysis

Abstract Objective Current meta-analysis aims to understand the effect of oral supplementation of vitamin D on intensive care unit (ICU) requirement and mortality in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Methods Databases PubMed, preprint servers, and google scholar were searched from December 2019 to December 2020. Authors searched for the articles assessing role of vitamin D supplementation on COVID-19. Cochrane RevMan tool was used for quantitative assessment of the data, where heterogeneity was assessed using I2 and Q statistics and data was expressed using odds ratio with 95% confidence interval. Results Final meta-analysis involved pooled data of 532 hospitalized patients (189 on vitamin D supplementation and 343 on usual care/placebo) of COVID-19 from three studies (Two randomized controlled trials, one retrospective case-control study). Statistically (p