Non-Bolus Doses of D cut Death by 41%

Post #700

A bolus dose of vitamin D is a super-large dose, usually given just one time, such as within the first 14 hours of admission to an ICU ward. But there are problems with giving bolus doses, as they hyper-activate an enzyme, 24-hydroxylase, which ends up suppressing fully-active vitamin D [ 1,25-dihydroxy vitamin D ].

Reviews which combine trials of bolus-dose vitamin D with multiple-dose vitamin D do a disservice to medical advancement because the effect from the bolus-dose trials “waters down” the statistically-significant effect of multi-dose vitamin D.

Multiple, smaller doses of vitamin D do not hyper-activate 24-hydroxylase, so you get the benefits without the down-side. When 14 trials of multiple-dose vitamin D were analyzed, it was discovered that vitamin D cut COVID mortality by 41%, leading to a relative risk (RR) of just 0.59:

Because cutting the COVID death risk by 41% was statistically-significant using those 14 trials, the medical profession ought to be interested in using vitamin D.

A write-up about secondary endpoints/outcomes in the phase III “VITdAL-ICU” randomized clinical trial (n=475) showed how promising vitamin D can be, where vitamin D in the critically ill cut death by 44% (RR=0.56):

Evidence very strongly suggests that ignoring vitamin D in acute respiratory infection is tantamount to medical malpractice.

Ignoring something that is more promising than “close-to-100%” of all FDA-approved therapies for a given illness invites suspicion of an underlying conflict of interest — a corruption of medical practice by special interests.

Reference

[bolus doses of vitamin D are medically substandard] — Mazess RB, Bischoff-Ferrari HA, Dawson-Hughes B. Vitamin D: Bolus Is Bogus-A Narrative Review. JBMR Plus. 2021 Oct 30;5(12):e10567. doi: 10.1002/jbm4.10567. PMID: 34950828; PMCID: PMC8674779. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8674779/

[Multi-dose vitamin D cuts COVID death risk by 41%] — Meng J, Li X, Liu W, Xiao Y, Tang H, Wu Y, Xiong Y, Gao S. The role of vitamin D in the prevention and treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Clin Nutr. 2023 Nov;42(11):2198-2206. doi: 10.1016/j.clnu.2023.09.008. Epub 2023 Sep 20. PMID: 37802017. https://www.clinicalnutritionjournal.com/article/S0261-5614(23)00296-0/fulltext

[write-up where the primary researchers documented that vitamin D in those who were critically ill and low in D, cut the death risk in every category observed] — National Library of Medicine. https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT03188796