Reduced Vitamin K Status as a Modifiable Prognostic Risk Factor in Covid-19 | Hacker News Reader

Reduced Vitamin K Status as a Modifiable Prognostic Risk Factor in Covid-19

preprints.org

44 pointsdrocer8813 comments

Their recommendation is that a future trial should test whether this treatment possibility shows any change on infected patients in controlled settings:

“A trial should assess whether increasing MGP and protein S activity by vitamin K administration improves Covid-19 outcomes.”

It is unknown if this helps or not - they are simply noting that the data encourages human testing.

As with all Covid preprint science, do not begin taking dietary supplements after reading a preprint headline or conclusion.

do not begin taking dietary supplements after reading a preprint headline or conclusion.

If I wasn't already taking them (adding C and D for good measure), I would start right now. One thing is chloroquine with its risky side effects (and it seems useles after all) and another very different thing is a vitamin supplement that's good for your health anyway.

you know, hypervitaminosis is a thing...

I know and also that I'm very far from it.

Your advice is unsafe without the context necessary to avoid harming oneself when adding or changing dietary supplementation. While you may understand that context, your flat declaration that "vitamin supplements are good" is plainly wrong without significant disclaimers that you did not include.

Vitamin K, as with other vitamins, can conflict with other medications, and therefore could result in an increased chance of harm or death to someone who takes it because "vitamin supplements are good for your health anyways" without understanding those risks. For example, one list of contraindications from a random Internet result lists:

> ... antacids, blood thinners, antibiotics, aspirin ... drugs for cancer, seizures, high cholesterol ...

Covid-19 is theorized to disrupt blood clotting in the body, and Vitamin K influences blood clotting in the body, so of course there's something worth studying here. But if the results are that Vitamin K supplementation increases harmful Covid-19 clotting, then more people will die from Covid simply because they took Vitamin K after reading a headline in the news.

I'm not giving advice, you are, and in absolute terms. I just told what I'm doing.

And... come on, I'm not a medical publication, or someone writing a label for a prescription drug, but a individual in an online forum taking issue with your previous dismissive comment.

Of course you need to research what you take, of course you need to look for maximum doses. Everyone needs to understand this because vitamins are otc, you can buy them through Amazon.

So how will we ever find out? We can’t run controlled randomized tests that can kill people because that’s unethical.

I wasn't always taking them, but was recommended to. I had VSG surgery in 2012 which isn't as bad as bypass but still has malabsorption of nutrients. D is my biggest difficiency. I've been taking D3(5000iu)+k2 since March religiously, and recently added 50mg zinc, and I ran out of vyvanse and a little weary of going back to dr just for a refill, so have been using caffeine + l-theanine which helps some...

I also take magnesium/calcium before bed as I heard you're supposed to take those when taking D3.

Great. Now my grocery store is going to be sold out of carrots.

More like spinach and broccoli.

Ah, right. I was confusing Vitamin K with beta-carotine.

You're better off with green leafy vegetables. Upshot of the preprint research is that Vitamin K may be beneficial in breaking up the blood clots in COVID-19. Extrahepatic vitamin K status was severely reduced in Covid-19 patients, as reflected by elevated inactive MGP, and related to poor outcome. Procoagulant prothrombin activity remained preserved in the majority of Covid-19 patients, which is compatible with the increased thrombogenicity that is frequently observed in severe Covid-19. Impaired MGP activation was linked to accelerated elastic fiber degradation and premorbid vascular calcifications.

Notice they refer to comorbidity from ageing and vascular calcification and thus the importance of K2. Good sources are dairy or, if you are vegan, natto! It's a (stinky) K2 MK-7 bomb [1].

PS: the formatting from hell? preprint looks like a web page printed out by internet explorer 5...

[1] - see "Menaquinone Content of Cheese" (includes comparison with natto) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5946231/

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