Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2022 Feb;20(2):231-241.
doi: 10.1080/14787210.2021.1941871. Epub 2021 Jul 15.

Vitamin D attenuates COVID-19 complications via modulation of proinflammatory cytokines, antiviral proteins, and autophagy

Sadaf Jamal Gilani  1 , May Nasser Bin-Jumah  2 , Muhammad Shahid Nadeem  3 , Imran Kazmi  3
Affiliations
Review

Vitamin D attenuates COVID-19 complications via modulation of proinflammatory cytokines, antiviral proteins, and autophagy

Sadaf Jamal Gilani et al. Expert Rev Anti Infect Ther. 2022 Feb.

Abstract

Introduction: Global emergence of coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) has clearly shown variable severity, mortality, and frequency between and within populations worldwide. These striking differences have made many biological variables attractive for future investigations. One of these variables, vitamin D, has been implicated in COVID-19 with rapidly growing scientific evidence.

Areas covered: The review intended to systematically explore the sources, and immunomodulatory role of vitamin D in COVID-19. Search engines and data sources including Google Scholar, PubMed, NCBI, Scopus, and Web of Science were used for data collection. The search terms used were Vitamin D, COVID-19, immune system, and antiviral mechanism. Overall, 232 sources of information were collected and 188 were included in this review.

Expert opinion: Interaction of vitamin D and vitamin D receptor (VDR) triggers the cellular events to modulate the immune system by regulation of many genes. Vitamin D operates as a double-edged sword against COVID-19. First, in macrophages, it promotes the production of antimicrobial and antiviral proteins like β-defensin 2 and cathelicidin, and these proteins inhibit the replication of viral particles and promote the clearance of virus from the cells by autophagy. Second, it suppresses cytokine storm and inflammatory processes in COVID-19.

Keywords: COVID-19; Vitamin D; immune system; mechanism of action; photosynthesis.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
A schematic representation of photosynthesis and activation of vitamin D in the human body
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Antiviral role of vitamin D by autophagy. A possible macrophage responses to viral infection involves the induction of VDR and 1α-hydroxylase (CYP27B1). Vitamin D (25-OHD) interacts with the vitamin D binding protein (DBP), enters the cells, activated to 1, 25 (OH)2D, and binds the VDR. Vitamin D-VDR binding results in the expression of genes coding for cathelicidin and β-defensin 2 (indicated by arrows), upregulation of NO and Ca, inhibition of mTOR mechanism, all these processes promote autophagy (adopted and modified from the recent literature [128,132–134]
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Lips P.Vitamin D physiology. Progress Biophy Mol Biol. 2006;92(1):4–8. - PubMed
    1. Longstreth JD, De Gruijl FR, van der Leun JC, et al. Effects of increased solar ultraviolet radiation on human health. AmBio. 1995;1:24.
    1. Lucas RM, McMichael AJ, Armstrong BK, et al. Estimating the global disease burden due to ultraviolet radiation exposure. Intl J Epidemiol. 2008;37(3):654–667. . - PubMed
    1. Holick MF. Vitamin D deficiency. New Engl J Med. 2007;357(3):266–281. - PubMed
    1. Wolpowitz D, Gilchrest BA. The vitamin D questions: how much do you need and how should you get it? J Am Acad Dermatol. 2006;54(2):301–317. - PubMed

Publication types

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the Deanship of Scientific Research at Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University through the Fast-track Research Funding Program to support publication in the top journal (Grant no.42-FTTJ-20).