Vitamin D status and seroconversion for COVID-19 in UK healthcare workers
Aduragbemi A. Faniyi, Sebastian T. Lugg, Sian Faustini, Craig Webster, Joanne Duffy, Martin Hewison, Adrian Shields, Peter Nightingale, Alex Richter, David Thickett
Abstract
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is a global health emergency, resulting in over 50 million infections and over 1.2 million deaths as of mid-November 2020 [1]. Healthcare workers are at a high risk of COVID-19 with large numbers of deaths reported around Europe and the UK, particularly among staff in the Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) demographic group [2]. COVID-19 has disproportionately affected BAME individuals even after accounting for age, sex, social deprivation and comorbidity [3]. NHS staff with vitamin D deficiency were more likely to have developed COVID-19, with staff from BAME ethnicity being the most vitamin D deficient <https://bit.ly/2J3kVTc> We thank the staff of University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust who kindly volunteered for this study. We would also like to thank the research staff of the Birmingham Wellcome NIHR Clinical Research Facility who undertook the staff facing assessments. We would like to thank colleagues at the Clinical Immunology Service for overseeing recruitment and sample processing. We also thank our colleagues Prof Adrian Martineau from Queen Mary University of London, Prof Elizabeth Sapey, Dr Dhruv Parekh, both from University of Birmingham and Prof Jon Rhodes from University of Liverpool, who have given helpful feedback on the study results and manuscript.