Discussion
COVID-19 infection
VITAMIN D DEFICIENCY, COVID-19 INFECTION
The main results of the present study including 117 COVID-19 patients with mild-to-moderate symptoms and a positive control RT-PCR on the 14th day following the confirmation of the diagnosis are that the recovery delay was longer in the VDs group than in the placebo group. To the best of the author’s knowledge, the present study was the first study which has explored the impact of VDs on recovery delay among COVID-19 patients in Tunisia. Vitamin D was not associated to a shortening recovery delay when administered for patients having a positive test on the 14th day; conversely, the median duration of RNA viral conversion was significantly longer in the intervention group than in the placebo group. We have included a random sample of patients having COVID-19 confined in the national center. Participants’ characteristics at baseline were comparable in the two groups. They were randomly allocated in group intervention or placebo. A recent meta-analysis concluded that serum vitamin D levels could be implicated in the COVID-19 prognosis [In our study, no beneficial effect of VDs on recovery delay among COVID-19 patients was noted. The median duration of viral conversion was longer in the VDs group than the placebo group. The study results were consistent with those found in the literature. In fact, no significant association between the vitamin D level and the risk of COVID-19 infection [However, several studies highlighted a beneficial effect of vitamin D among COVID-19 patients [In our study, we analyzed the Ct value which represents the number of replication cycles that are needed during real-time PCR to develop the target sample above a threshold level [The present study presented some limitations. The analysis of vitamin D serum levels was not done. This can be used to identify COVID-19 patients with vitamin D deficiency at baseline. Another limitation of our study was the fact that Ct values were measured on the 14th day following the confirmation of COVID-19 diagnosis for those who were asymptomatic, and on the 7th day after the disappearance of symptoms for pauci-symptomatic ones.