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GidMK's profile
Health Nerd
Health Nerd
Health Nerd
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@GidMK

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Health NerdVerified account

@GidMK

Epidemiologist. Writer (Guardian, Observer etc). "Well known research trouble-maker". PhDing at @UoW Host of @senscipod Email gidmk.healthnerd@gmail.com he/him

Sydney, New South Wales
theguardian.com/profile/gideon…
Joined November 2015

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    1. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 28 Sep 2020

      This study in PLOS One is being reported (and used by a lot of people on twitter) as proving definitively that Vitamin D supplementation can treat COVID-19 So, thought I'd do a peer-review on twitter 1/npic.twitter.com/bIsYSKdmjj

      40 replies 212 retweets 514 likes
      Show this thread
      Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 28 Sep 2020

      2/n The study is here if you want to read it - a very simple retrospective epidemiological paper:https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0239799 …

      4:43 PM - 28 Sep 2020
      • 7 Retweets
      • 41 Likes
      • kfunk937 Susanne Lissys Frauchen Bannannika Isa ༄₊˚. #HarumiDay!!! Science-Based Beth❄ #BethRunsWithHorses Etienne Rhys Manchester Ara TakingHayekSeriously🧨
      2 replies 7 retweets 41 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 28 Sep 2020

          3/n Basically, the authors took a sample of people who'd been hospitalized with COVID-19, and split them up into 2 groups - normal vs low vitamin D (or, more technically, "sufficient" vs "insufficient")

          1 reply 4 retweets 45 likes
          Show this thread
        3. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 28 Sep 2020

          4/n They found that those with low vit D had a higher risk of some adverse outcomes, in particular that people >40 years with low vit D died more often than people >40 years with normal vit Dpic.twitter.com/Fb7NIPkpBd

          1 reply 6 retweets 45 likes
          Show this thread
        4. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 28 Sep 2020

          5/n Sounds good right? Well, some issues Firstly, sample size: it was VERY SMALLpic.twitter.com/kq4XeuicBv

          1 reply 5 retweets 67 likes
          Show this thread
        5. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 28 Sep 2020

          6/n The study used a dataset with 611 patients, but only 235 of them had information on their vitamin D status, so the final sample for the study was only 235pic.twitter.com/I4R7BRIpyt

          1 reply 3 retweets 50 likes
          Show this thread
        6. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 28 Sep 2020

          7/n For that main, headline finding - that vit D reduces the risk of death - the authors were looking at a subset of this number (about 150 people) That's not a lot!

          1 reply 2 retweets 49 likes
          Show this thread
        7. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 28 Sep 2020

          8/n It's also very odd when you actually look at the results, because the findings seem...wildly unimpressive This graph, for example, comparing vit D levels with risk of death. It's about as null a finding as you can get at first glancepic.twitter.com/fL7Ap83XgU

          2 replies 8 retweets 79 likes
          Show this thread
        8. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 28 Sep 2020

          9/n If we look just at the patients who the authors found a significant relationship for - those over 40 - you can kind of see a relationship but it's VERY slimpic.twitter.com/pOAWPvWpex

          3 replies 2 retweets 39 likes
          Show this thread
        9. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 28 Sep 2020

          10/n And when you look at all of the other outcomes the authors analyzed, a similar pattern emerges Low vit D increased the risk of hypoxia, but not shortness of breath. It DECREASED (not significantly) the risk of chest painpic.twitter.com/ZTeL7a5tGC

          1 reply 3 retweets 41 likes
          Show this thread
        10. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 28 Sep 2020

          11/n You could write this study up as demonstrating that there was no correlation between vit D and most COVID-19 outcomes, and therefore we still don't know if it does anything for the disease

          1 reply 3 retweets 64 likes
          Show this thread
        11. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 28 Sep 2020

          12/n Instead, the authors use the pretty tenuous observational link between low vit D in people over 40 and death to posit that supplementation should be used for all patients which isn't really supported by their resultspic.twitter.com/y5tkjFnXOZ

          2 replies 3 retweets 59 likes
          Show this thread
        12. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 28 Sep 2020

          13/n While I could go into the results a bit more - the statistical analysis is a little bit meaningless, the confounding factors not really even considered - but honestly there's not really much point I think

          3 replies 2 retweets 48 likes
          Show this thread
        13. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 28 Sep 2020

          14/n The results show a vague correlation between vit D and some outcomes, with a smattering of statistical significance if you run the analyses in certain ways Not much that you can take away from that, I think

          2 replies 6 retweets 54 likes
          Show this thread
        14. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 28 Sep 2020

          15/n If nothing else, the small sample size makes it hard to conclude anything from these results other than "we need BETTER research"

          28 replies 6 retweets 122 likes
          Show this thread
        15. End of conversation

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