The scientific evidence for taking Vitamin D to decrease the severity of COVID-19 continues to come in with this prospective clinical pilot study (randomized and blinded).

Here’s the link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960076020302764?via%3Dihub

Results…

“Of 50 patients treated with calcifediol, one required admission to the ICU (2%), while of 26 untreated patients, 13 required admission (50%)… p < 0.001.”  

Conclusion…

“Our pilot study demonstrated that administration of a high dose of Calcifediol or 25-hydroxyvitamin D, a main metabolite of vitamin D endocrine system, significantly reduced the need for ICU treatment of patients requiring hospitalization due to proven COVID-19. Calcifediol seems to be able to reduce severity of the disease….”

Note:

The stuff they gave the trial patients in this experiment was Calcifediol (also called “Calcidiol” and 25-hydroxyvitamin D). It is not vitamin D2 or D3.  Instead, calcifediol is the hormonal form of vitamin D that the liver makes from vitamin D2 and D3. This hormonal form is then converted in the kidneys to the active form, calcitriol (25-hydroxyvitamin D).

Ordinarily, vitamin D2 and D3 come from the diet and the sun, but the mainstream is now beginning to admit that many, if not most of us, are NOT getting enough vitamin D without supplementation, whether D2 or D3.

So which is better, D3 or D2 supplements?

There are conflicting studies. The mainstream now says it probably doesn’t matter, but this could change next week.

I take D3 this week.

Keep in mind that genetic SNPs are still being regularly ignored in almost all randomized clinical trials. This is the fundamental weakness of almost all mainstream clinical medical literature, especially when negative findings are touted as proof that a treatment or supplement is worthless to every individual in the entire world.

A possible example of this ubiquitous error might be evident in my experience with ginkgo biloba.

Out there somewhere in the ether there’s a randomized clinical trial that has “proven” (to the mainstream medical community of overworked, under-appreciated drones) that ginkgo biloba doesn’t help anyone’s memory. Don’t waste your money, right?

And yet with my unique list of genetic SNPs, when I took Ginkgo back in the 1990s, I was astonished that I could, for the first time, remember where I had parked my car in the VA’s vast parking lot. I could visualize my parked car and its location effortlessly when I walked out into the darkness after a day’s work.

Anecdotal evidence is not rubbish. They call it “evidence” for a reason.

For what it’s worth, Dr. Amen (of the Amen Clinics) says that in all of his (broad) anecdotal clinical experience, the most normal looking spect brain scans he sees tend to come from patients who have been taking ginkgo biloba.

Rubbish? Not in my book.

Fortunately, the vitamin D clinical trial mentioned above showed strong statistical significance. If it had not, it would have been widely quoted by the mainstream as “proof” that taking vitamin D supplements for COVID-19 is a waste of time.

Since the future studies of Vitamin D and COVID-19 will involve larger numbers of randomized patients whose genetic differences (SNPS and epigenetic markers) will be ignored as usual, as if non-existent, it is likely that the statistical significance of the benefits of taking vitamin D for COVID-19 will be lower (a higher p-value) than we see in this small study with its strikingly significant (low) p-value of less than 0.001. (The higher the p-value, the more likely the results are due to coincidence, of course.)

But if significance disappears in larger trials, don’t let it convince you that Vitamin D supplementation “is now known to be of no clinical benefit for COVID-19 patients.” That would be rubbish.

The more they homogenize the genetic differences of populations by including larger and larger numbers of random individuals in clinical trials, the less likely something that helped a few genetic outliers in a small study will show up as statistically significant. And the thing is, many of us are “genetic outliers” in one way or another, because there are so MANY genes.

Here’s an analogy: in surgical pathology practice it’s common to see rare tumors. But isn’t this a contradiction? If you see them a lot, how could they be rare?

A pathologist sees rare tumors fairly often because there are a huge number or different varieties of rare tumors. You may see only one case of bilateral pheochromocytoma in your lifetime, but the next day you will probably see some other rare tumor that you’ll never see again.

The current black-and-white world (of mainstream clinical trials) that foolishly ignores genetic diversity to everyone’s detriment will someday change and become a joke for first-year medical students.

Not a joke, a grim anecdote.

Like the one about…

How we used to go from the morgue to the maternity ward in the 1840s without handwashing. Mainstream doctors did this, literally killing countless women by inoculating them with bacteria that caused “childbed fever.” All this, while ignoring the fringe voice of Ignaz Semmelweis and doing everything in science’s dark tradition to ruin the careers of the fringe, in this case, the Father of Handwashing.

How dare anyone challenge the settled science of miasmas with this fringy bacterial nonsense?

Love and good health,

Morrill Talmage Moorehead, MD