A paper that purported to find vitamin D could reduce the severity of COVID-19 symptoms has been retracted from PLOS ONE, four years after the journal issued an expression of concern about the research.
The article, “Vitamin D sufficiency, a serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D at least 30 ng/mL reduced risk for adverse clinical outcomes in patients with COVID-19 infection,” appeared online September 25, 2020. Michael F. Holick, a professor of medicine at Boston University and a proponent of the use of vitamin D, was the last author among a group of other researchers from the Tehran University of Medical Sciences in Iran.
Soon after publication, the paper gained traction on platforms like Twitter (now X) as evidence vitamin D could treat COVID-19 symptoms.
Amidst this discussion, Nick Brown, a science integrity researcher at Linnaeus University in Växjö, Sweden, and Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, a research fellow at the University of Wollongong, Australia, pointed out potential flaws with the work, including the small sample size of the study and a lack of patient information such as how the patients died.
Continue reading Paper recommending vitamin D for COVID-19 retracted four years after expression of concern