ArticleFrontiers in public health2020
Vitamin D Deficiency and Air Pollution Exacerbate COVID-19 Through Suppression of Antiviral Peptide LL37.
Article in Frontiers in public health, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers.
What it found
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed, 61 citations in OpenAlex.
- Trial
- Vitamin D and COVID-19: Inmunomodulatory Effects and the Mexican Public Health Perspectives.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- Vitamin D-inducible antimicrobial peptide LL-37 binds SARS-CoV-2 Spike and accessory proteins ORF7a and ORF8.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2025Article
- Establishment of Baseline Urinary Antimicrobial Peptide Levels by Age: A Prospective Observational Study.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2024Observational
- Protective effects of inhaled antioxidants against air pollution-induced pathological responses.Respiratory research · 2023Review
- Air quality and respiratory health in children.Breathe (Sheffield, England) · 2023Review
- Recent advances in vitamin D implications in chronic respiratory diseases.Respiratory research · 2022Review
- The sex and gender dimensions of COVID-19: A narrative review of the potential underlying factors.Infection, genetics and evolution : journal of molecular epidemiology and evolutionary genetics in infectious diseases · 2022Review
- Assessing temporal correlation in environmental risk factors to design efficient area-specific COVID-19 regulations: Delhi based case study.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Circulating biomarkers of inflammaging as potential predictors of COVID-19 severe outcomes.Mechanisms of ageing and development · 2022Review
- 25-Hydroxyvitamin D potentializes extracellular cathelicidin release from human PBMC stimulated ex vivo with either bacterial (LPS) or viral (P: IC) mimetics.Journal of physiology and biochemistry · 2022Article
- Article
- Host Defence Peptides: A Potent Alternative to Combat Antimicrobial Resistance in the Era of the COVID-19 Pandemic.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- Investigational antiviral drugs for the treatment of COVID-19 patients.Archives of virology · 2022Review
- HBD-2 variants and SARS-CoV-2: New insights into inter-individual susceptibility.Frontiers in immunology · 2022Article
- Upregulating Human Cathelicidin Antimicrobial Peptide LL-37 Expression May Prevent Severe COVID-19 Inflammatory Responses and Reduce Microthrombosis.Frontiers in immunology · 2022Review
- Environmental Impacts on Infectious Disease: A Literature View of Epidemiological Evidence.Annals of global health · 2022Review
- Natural Bioactive Molecules: An Alternative Approach to the Treatment and Control of COVID-19.International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Review
- The effect of vitamin D, magnesium and zinc supplements on interferon signaling pathways and their relationship to control SARS-CoV-2 infection.Clinical and molecular allergy : CMA · 2021Review
- Relevance of vitamin DGene reports · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency (VDD) are widely recognized as risk factors for respiratory tract infections. Vitamin D influences expression of many genes with well-established relevance to airway infections and relevant to immune system function. Recently, VDD has been shown to be a risk factor for acquisition and severity of COVID-19. Thus, treating VDD presents a safe and inexpensive opportunity for modulating the severity of the disease. VDD is common in those over 60 years of age, many with co-morbid conditions and in people with skin pigmentation sufficient to reduce synthesis of vitamin D. Exposure to fine particulate air pollution is also associated with worse outcomes from COVID19. Vitamin D stimulates transcription of cathelicidin which is cleaved to generate LL37. LL37 is an innate antimicrobial with demonstrated activity against a wide range of microbes including envelope viruses. LL37 also modulates cytokine signaling at the site of infections. Fine particles in air pollution can interfere with LL37 destruction of viruses and may reduce effective immune signaling modulation by LL37. While vitamin D influences transcription of many immune related genes, the weakened antimicrobial response of those with VDD against SARS-CoV-2 may be in part due to reduced LL37.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.