Episode 9: News on Melatonin and Vitamin D with Diane Bao
This episode with hosted by Diane Bao with two interesting research articles to discuss today. One is about COVID-19 severity and vitamin D, and the other is about increasing rates of melatonin use among US adults.
A review of 6 randomized controlled trials with over 500 COVID patients indicates that COVID patients undergoing vitamin D supplementation have lower rates of ICU admission and death compared to COVID patients not taking vitamin D.
The melatonin study, published in February 2022, reviews around 55,000 Americans’ responses on the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. From 1999-2018, the prevalence of melatonin use increased significantly.
Article 1: COVID-19 and vitamin D supplementation
Varikasuvu, S. R., Thangappazham, B., Vykunta, A., Duggina, P., Manne, M., Raj, H., & Aloori, S. (2022). COVID-19 and vitamin D (Co-VIVID study): A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Expert Rev Anti Infect Ther, 3(1), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1080/14787210.2022.2035217. A PDF of the article is also available at https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.22.21262216v1.full.pdf.
Article 2: Increasing use of melatonin among American adults since 1999
Li, J., Somers, V. K., Xu, H., Lopez-Jiminez, F., & Covassin, N. (2022). Trends in use of melatonin supplements among US adults, 1999-2019. JAMA, 327(5), 483-485. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2021.23652
Transcript
Hi, everyone, my name is Diane Bao, and I'm part of the podcast team for the public health weekly news report. So we're just here describing some interesting articles that we found. And hopefully, we can give everyone a brief overview of something interesting so that they can learn more about public health and how it's affecting the world today.
y, in January and February of:So this first article is called the COVID-19 and vitamin D COVID study, essentially, how does vitamin D supplementation potentially affect patients who have COVID. And so among six different randomized controlled trials, with a sum of about 550 COVID patients, the authors have found that patients who are being treated with vitamin D have lower rates of ICU admission and death compared to COVID patients who are not being supplemented with vitamin D. So the authors of this paper are very careful to point out that this isn't a be all end all, we don't have conclusive proof that vitamin D necessarily benefits you when or if you have COVID. But the authors merely point out at the end of the article that we should do more meta analyses, and have larger sample sizes, when investigating how vitamin D might benefit you when you have COVID. And so this, while it's great to have about 550, COVID patients, that's obviously not a ton of people. And so we need to increase sample sizes and keep doing research. So I think it's really interesting, I know that there are a lot of issues in terms of regulating supplements and keeping people safe. So obviously, this isn't saying like, well, the more vitamin D you take, the more vitamin D you take, the safer you'll be from COVID. This is merely just an examination of Oh, we found this interesting trend.
s among American adults since:Obviously, we will continue looking at how people are buying melatonin and how vitamin D or melatonin could potentially be affecting people's health. So anyways, this has been the public health weekly news report.
I hope you've enjoyed these two articles. And I will put links to both of them in the show notes. If anyone wants to read them in full. They're pretty long. They're not that exciting. But I do think it's interesting to look at the way that supplements affect our health and potentially the way that we consume supplements when we might think that supplements benefit our health so again my name is Diane Bao and thanks so much.
