Evaluation of vitamin D, CRP and D-dimer levels in COVID-19 patients in the City of Mostaganem

Abstract

Vitamin D is a group of fat-soluble prohormones responsible for increasing intestinal absorption of calcium, magnesium, and phosphate which is also responsible for many other biological effects including the regulation of several physiological processes like cell proliferation, differentiation, and immunity modulation. COVID-19 is a highly contagious viral illness caused by SARS-CoV-2, which has had a catastrophic effect on the world’s demographics resulting in more than 6.31 million deaths worldwide as of June 2022. Low serum vitamin D levels have been associated with increased vulnerability to respiratory infections and vitamin D treatment has been found to decrease other viral respiratory infections, especially in persons with vitamin D deficiency. The objective of this work was to investigate hypovitaminosis D in COVID-19 by evaluating the levels of vitamin D, CRP and D-dimer and determining the potential relationship between these parameters and the risk of COVID-19 infection. Our study population mainly included 18 COVID-19-positive patients (11 women and 7 men) whose ages ranged from 17 to 83 years old. The obtained results reveal a prevalence of hypovitaminosis D (< 30ng/ml) as well as elevated CRP levels (> 6ng/l) in the majority of these COVID-19-positive patients. In the other results elevated D-dimer levels (> 0.5mg/l) were observed in the patients with COVID-19. The results of this study suggest that COVID-19 positivity is significantly associated with hypovitaminosis D, elevated CRP levels, and elevated D-dimer levels. Whether the treatment of this hypovitaminosis D will play some role in the prevention of the viral disease or improve the prognosis of patients with COVID-19 remains to be demonstrated in large randomized controlled trials, which will be certainly necessary to determine whether vitamin D levels could affect COVID‐19 risk and precisely define the role of vitamin D treatment in futures waves of SARS-CoV-2 infection.