Children, Vitamin D deficiency & risk of COVID‐19

While children do not tend to be as severely affected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the resulting effects of COVID-19, they are certainly not immune to it, and there is concern that children who carry the virus but are asymptomatic are a contributor to its spread. Children are also not ‘immune’ to vitamin D deficiency – in fact, a previous post shared data from the US NHANES data set showing that vitamin D levels decline as children age with a 4-fold increase in the proportion of children below 20 ng/ml (50 nmol/L) from ages 0-4 years up to ages 13-17 years old.

But, how might Vitamin D levels in children affect their COVID-19 status?

To answer this question, Kamil Yilmaz and Velat Sen conducted a study that recently published in Pediatric Pulmonology Medical Journal in which they enrolled 85 children between the ages of 1 month to 18 years, 40 of whom had been diagnosed with COVID-19 and hospitalized, and 45 who were healthy controls.

Children diagnosed with COVID-19 were divided into two groups for analysis – Group 1 included children who had a vitamin D level below 20 ng/ml, and Group 2 included those with levels at or above 20 ng/ml.

The study found a significant difference in vitamin D levels between the children with COVID-19, who had a median level of 13 ng/ml (32 nmol/L), and the control group, with a median level of 35 ng/ml (87 nmol/L).

When disease severity for the children who were diagnosed with COVID-19 was analysed according to vitamin D level, a trend was found showing the followings:

•  Increased disease severity for those with lower vitamin D levels.
•  31% of Vitamin D diffident children had moderate to severe COVID-19 symptoms, compared to only 18% with moderate symptoms (none classified as severe) for those children with sufficient vitamin D levels or higher.
•  Additionally, 46% of the children with higher vitamin D levels were asymptomatic, compared to 10% of those with lower vitamin D levels.
• Significant negative correlation between vitamin D level and the chance of getting a fever (defined as a temperature above 38 C, p=0.023). meaning that as vitamin D levels increased, the chance of fever decreased.
• Overall, none (0%) of the children with a high vitamin D level had a fever.
• While 34.5% of the children with a low vitamin D level had a fever.

In this context, it is just as important for your children to avoid vitamin D deficiency as it is for you. Ensure your children are also getting enough vitamin D daily and with serum levels of 40-60 ng/ml (100-150 nmol/L) for a strong, healthy immune response.

Therefore, correcting a vitamin D deficiency and ensure optimal Vitamin D levels at any age and any time of life decrease potential disease COVID-19 severity and improve outcomes and with Ditamin BabyVit D3 drops supplementation become an easy way to correct and maintain Vitamin D level and help support kid’s immune system both innate and adaptive responses because is just one tasteless, colorless and odorless drops of pure FDA, GMP standard Vitamin D3 without any artificial additives.

We hope that this study could help your physicians and the mums to improve the clinical outcome of their positive COVID-19 kids using Ditamin BabyVit D3 Drops as adjuvant treatment to reduce the disease severity and improve the outcomes… Because your kid’s smile matters to United Pharma Canada.