Effects of Vitamin D Supplementation and Degradation on the Innate Immune System Response: Insights on SARS-CoV-2

Abstract

Vitamin D has been proven to be a strong stimulator of mechanisms associated with the elimination of pathogens. Because of its recognized effectiveness against viral infections, during SARS-CoV-2 infection, the effects of Vitamin D supplementation have been the object of debate. This study aims to contribute to this debate by the means of a qualitative phenomenological mathematical model in which the role of Vitamin D and its interactions with the innate immune system are explicitly considered. We show that Vitamin D influx and degradation can be considered as possible control parameters for the disease evaluation and recovery. By varying Vitamin D influx, three dynamical scenarios have been found with different modalities of recovery from the disease. Inside each scenario, Vitamin D degradation has been related to different degrees of severity in disease development. Interestingly, the emergence of hysteretic phenomenologies when Vitamin D influx is too low can be related to the onset of Long-COVID syndrome, confirming clinical evidence from recent studies on the topic.

Keywords

• nonlinear dynamical systems
• Vitamin D
• pathogen–innate immune system interaction
• hysteretic phenomenology
• COVID-19