Hmm, I consider that paper to be pretty weak evidence -- as elsewhere, it shows a hypothesized connection via some intermediaries: they show Vitamin D inhibits inflammatory cytokines, but then presume that this inhibition must therefore help avoid hypercytokinaemia (cytokine storms), despite hypercytokinaemia being an edge case/failure mode of the immune system that is not particularly well-understood.
The paper I shared in my previous post cites work showing that Vitamin D promotes other kinds of inflammatory cytokines.
So, yeah. Vitamin D might reduce the likelihood of a cytokine storm, and circumstantial evidence relying on mechanism-of-action suggests that it does -- but this hasn't been demonstrated conclusively.
What is known, however, and which this paper reiterates, is that if you're deficient in Vitamin D, you're more likely to suffer from respiratory tract infections. Take a supplement!
The paper you cited only deal with cell lines (i.e. in-vitro studies), whereas you can find good quality in-vivo RCT studies about both low grade inflammation and cytokines storm. Hell, you can event find meta-analysis for specific conditions and related inflammatory state (CHF, type 2 diabete, ...)
Hell, we even have preliminary human studies dealing with just that: clinical outcome for patients admitted in intensive care unit, with or without a single mega-dose of vitamin D: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4939707/
> Hell, we even have preliminary human studies dealing with just that: clinical outcome for patients admitted in intensive care unit, with or without a single mega-dose of vitamin D: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4939707/
Thank you, this is what I was looking for! Great outcome.
The other three papers you cite are also all correlations of Vitamin D with inflammatory factors, not with disease outcomes. I must have missed the study that looks specifically at cytokine storms as a dependent variable. Could you point it out to me?
The paper I shared in my previous post cites work showing that Vitamin D promotes other kinds of inflammatory cytokines.
So, yeah. Vitamin D might reduce the likelihood of a cytokine storm, and circumstantial evidence relying on mechanism-of-action suggests that it does -- but this hasn't been demonstrated conclusively.
What is known, however, and which this paper reiterates, is that if you're deficient in Vitamin D, you're more likely to suffer from respiratory tract infections. Take a supplement!