Student or educator? Sign up with your school email and get 6 months of Pro free.
Cited by 432

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 61 of the 61 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Low plasma 25(OH) vitamin D level is associated with increased risk of COVID‐19 infection: an Israeli population‐based study

Open access
Merzon, Eugene, Tworowski, Dmitry, Gorohovski, Alessandro, Vinker, Shlomo, Golan Cohen, Avivit, Green, Ilan, Frenkel‐Morgenstern, Milana·2020·The FEBS Journal

Published version of a preprint

Abstract

Vitamin D deficiency is a worldwide pandemic. The aim of this study was to evaluate associations of plasma 25(OH)D levels with the likelihood of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) infection and hospitalization. The study population included the 14 000 members of Leumit Health Services, who were tested for COVID‐19 infection from February 1 st to April 30 th , 2020, and who had at least one previous blood test for the plasma 25(OH)D level. ‘Suboptimal’ or ‘low’ plasma 25(OH)D level was defined as plasma 25‐hydroxyvitamin D, or 25(OH)D, concentration below the level of 30 ng/mL. Of 7807 individuals, 782 (10.02%) were COVID‐19‐positive, and 7025 (89.98%) COVID‐19‐negative. The mean plasma vitamin D level was significantly lower among those who tested positive than negative for COVID‐19 [19.00 ng/mL (95% confidence interval (CI) 18.41–19.59) vs. 20.55 (95% CI: 20.32–20.78)]. Univariate analysis demonstrated an association between the low plasma 25(OH)D level and increased likelihood of COVID‐19 infection [crude odds ratio (OR) of 1.58 (95% CI: 1.24–2.01, P < 0.001)], and of hospitalization due to the SARS‐CoV‐2 virus [crude OR of 2.09 (95% CI: 1.01–4.30, P < 0.05)]. In multivariate analyses that controlled for demographic variables, and psychiatric and somatic disorders, the adjusted OR of COVID‐19 infection [1.45 (95% CI: 1.08–1.95, P < 0.001)] and of hospitalization due to the SARS‐CoV‐2 virus [1.95 (95% CI: 0.98–4.845, P = 0.061)] were preserved. In the multivariate analyses, age over 50 years, male gender and low–medium socioeconomic status were also positively associated with the risk of COVID‐19 infection; age over 50 years was positively associated with the likelihood of hospitalization due to COVID‐19. We concluded that low plasma 25(OH)D levels appear to be an independent risk factor for COVID‐19 infection and hospitalization.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1111/febs.15495

Cites

61 of 61 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Show all 61 references

Research works printed but not linked: 7

  1. 10.2174/1871526520999200505174704 · doi:10.2174/1871526520999200505174704
  2. 10.1111/apt.15796 · doi:10.1111/apt.15796
  3. Molloy EJ, 2020, Vitamin D, Covid‐19 and children, Ir Med J, 113, 64
  4. 10.1016/j.mehy.2020.109767 · doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2020.109767
  5. 10.1016/j.dsx.2020.05.047 · doi:10.1016/j.dsx.2020.05.047
  6. 10.1016/j.ejim.2020.05.033 · doi:10.1016/j.ejim.2020.05.033
  7. 10.1183/13993003.01116-2020 · doi:10.1183/13993003.01116-2020

Cited by

See all 432

Metadata

Authors
Merzon, E., Tworowski, D., Gorohovski, A., Vinker, S., Golan Cohen, A., Green, I., & Frenkel‐Morgenstern, M.
Venue
The FEBS Journal
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2020-08-28
Volume
287
Issue
17
Pages
3693-3702
ISSN
  • 1742-464X (ISSN-L)
  • 1742-4658
OpenAlex
W3044007210
Cited by
432
References
61
FWCI
53.61
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
bronze

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review

How to cite

Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.

This page
CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Low plasma 25(OH) vitamin D level is associated with increased risk of COVID‐19 infection: an Israeli population‐based study. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1111/febs.15495
The paper
Merzon, E., Tworowski, D., Gorohovski, A., Vinker, S., Golan Cohen, A., Green, I., & Frenkel‐Morgenstern, M. (2020). Low plasma 25(OH) vitamin D level is associated with increased risk of COVID‐19 infection: an Israeli population‐based study. The FEBS Journal. https://doi.org/10.1111/febs.15495

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.