key: cord-0849209-jx15ib8v
authors: Darling, A. L.; Ahmadi, K. R.; Ward, K. A.; Harvey, N. C.; Couto Alves, A.; Dunn-Waters, D. K.; Lanham-New, S. A.; Cooper, C.; Blackbourn, D. J.
title: Vitamin D status, body mass index, ethnicity and COVID-19: Initial analysis of the first-reported UK Biobank COVID-19 positive cases (n 580) compared with negative controls (n 723)
date: 2020-05-05
journal: nan
DOI: 10.1101/2020.04.29.20084277
sha: 9610bca48db19977f7211dae96b13eb6ffbf6b0f
doc_id: 849209
cord_uid: jx15ib8v

In this short report we present a preliminary assessment of the serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D status (25(OH)D), body mass index (BMI), ethnicity and other lifestyle factors in the first-reported UK Biobank COVID-19 positive cases (n 580) compared with negative controls (n 723). The COVID-19 cases include those who have been treated as a hospital in-patient as well as those who have not, and are from England only. Mean (SD) for age was 57.5 (8.7) in positive cases and 57.9 (8.7) in negative controls.

. It must be borne in mind that the sample on average was not severely vitamin D deficient and results may differ in populations with a higher prevalence of severe vitamin D deficiency. As shown in Table 1 , there was no difference in 25(OH)D status by gender; however 25(OH)D was significantly lower in those with obesity [P<0.001] by 9 nmol/L compared with those of normal or overweight. Of note, 25(OH)D status was also significantly lower in those of Asian, Black and Mixed ethnicity (by 16nmol/L) [P<0.001] compared with those of White ethnicity. This supports previous findings of a low serum 25(OH)D in UK South Asian individuals from the UK DFINES study 1 . Being a regular smoker (smoking on all or most days) was associated with a reduced odds (OR=0.58 (0.39-0.86)) of testing positive, compared with being a non-smoker (OR=1). However a key limitation of this analysis is that there were only a small number of regular smokers (n 142) and persons of Asian, Black or Mixed/Other Ethnicity in the sample and larger populations will be required to confirm these results.

Another limitation of our analysis is that vitamin D status was assessed in the UK Biobank cohort using baseline samples which were collected in 2006-2010. However, there is scientific evidence to show that that an individual's vitamin D status tends to track over time; for example, those with status in the top quartile of 25(OH)D status in the population will likely still be in that range over a decade later 2 . Therefore, we used quartiles of 25(OH)D status in our analysis rather than the specific 25(OH)D value which showed a null association with Covid-19 test result. When a BMI x 25(OH)D status (continuous variable) interaction term was trialed in the model, it was not statistically significant suggesting the interaction between BMI and 25(OH)D status did not predict test result in the currently available dataset.

As the number of reported cases increases in the UK Biobank, we will expand our model to control for additional factors such as blood pressure, use of statin medications, diagnoses of cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, diabetes, COVID-19-attributed mortality and conditions affecting immune function, as well as genetics. . CC-BY-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. (which was not certified by peer review)

The copyright holder for this preprint this version posted May 5, 2020. .

Vitamin D deficiency in UK South Asian Women of childbearing age: a comparative longitudinal investigation with UK Caucasian women

Tracking of serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels during 14 years in a population-based study and during 12 months in an intervention study

This research was conducted under UK Biobank Project 15168; the views are those of the authors' own. Note: DKDW is not a collaborator on a UK Biobank project and did not view the data. 

The UK Biobank study was conducted according to the guidelines laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki and all procedures involving human subjects were approved by the UK North West Multi-centre Research Ethics Committee (MREC); application 11/NW/0382. Written informed consent was obtained from all subjects.

This work was supported by in-house funds from the University of Surrey for payment of the UK Biobank access fee. The UK Biobank was established by the Wellcome Trust medical charity, Medical Research Council, Department of Health, Scottish Government and the Northwest Regional Development Agency. It has also had funding from the Welsh Assembly Government and the British Heart Foundation. UK Biobank is hosted by the University of Manchester and supported by the National Health Service (NHS). All the above funders had no role in the design, analysis or writing of the present study.