Vitamin D Supplementation: A Potential Approach for Coronavirus/COVID-19 Therapeutics?

Keywords: SARS-Cov-2; COVID-19; vitamin D; antiviral; anti-inflammatory EN SARS-Cov-2 COVID-19 vitamin D antiviral anti-inflammatory 1 4 4 06/26/20 20200623 NES 200623 The ongoing pandemic: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2 has become one of the most important epidemiological events within the last 100 years, causing devastating consequences for the public health systems and the socioeconomical tissue around the world ([1]-[3]). In line with findings from other reports ([10]), our observations that vitamin D-derived antiviral mechanisms can restrict viral infection and attenuate the pro-inflammatory response ([22]) have been corroborated I ex vivo i in two different vitamin D supplementation exploratory studies. Indeed, outbreaks and higher incidence of respiratory viruses such as influenza and coronavirus are common beyond subtropical areas with low sunlight exposure levels and prevalence of vitamin D deficiency/insufficiency such as Europe and Northern United States, which have been highly affected by COVID-19 ([10], [11], [58]). In summary, we postulate that conventional oral vitamin D supplementation can be a readily strategy to aim: (i) restriction of SARS-CoV-2 infection via downregulation of ACE2 receptor, and (ii) attenuation of disease severity by down-tuning the pulmonary pro-inflammatory response or cytokine storm that fuels COVID-19 severity. [Extracted from the article]