Vitamin D status and seroconversion for COVID-19 in UK healthcare workers

  1. Aduragbemi A. Faniyi
  2. Sebastian T. Lugg
  3. Sian E. Faustini
  4. Craig Webster
  5. Joanne E. Duffy
  6. Martin Hewison
  7. Adrian Shields
  8. Peter Nightingale
  9. Alex G. Richter
  10. David R. Thickett

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Abstract

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  1. Version published to 10.1183/13993003.04234-2020
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.05.20206706: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: The study was approved by the London - Camden & Kings Cross Research Ethics Committee (
    Consent: Email adverts were sent to hospital staff to inform them of the study with written informed consent obtained for all participants.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Antibodies
    SentencesResources
    SARS-CoV-2 antibody assay: We measured anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies using an in-house IgG, IgA, IgM combined ELISA antibody previously reported.12,13 The ELISA is CE-marked with 98.3% (95% CI: 96.4-99.4%) specificity and 98.6% sensitivity (95% CI: 92.6-100%).14 Briefly, high-binding plates (Nunc-Maxi-sorp) were coated with 1 μg/ml trimeric SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein,15,16 and blocked with Stabil coat solution (Sigma Aldrich).
    anti-SARS-CoV-2
    suggested: None
    IgG , IgA
    suggested: None
    Antibodies were detected using a combined secondary layer containing horse-radish peroxidase conjugated polyclonal antibodies against IgG, IgA and IgM (The Binding Site, UK).
    antibodies against IgG
    suggested: None
    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Participant recruitment: This prospective observational study recruited healthcare workers between 12th to 22nd May 2020 from the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHBFT) across four sites as part of the COVID-19 convalescent immunity study (COCO).
    COCO
    suggested: (CoCo, RRID:SCR_010947)
    All analysis was performed using the IBM SPSS V.25 and GraphPad Prism V.8.
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)
    GraphPad Prism
    suggested: (GraphPad Prism, RRID:SCR_002798)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    This study has limitations. Firstly, staff were recruited from a single NHS trust based in Birmingham which is the second largest NHS trust in the UK with 4 hospital sites. This study recruited only healthcare workers from secondary care hospital settings. The data presented here would benefit from a large validation cohort of staff from across the full diversity of NHS. There is also a need to try and validate these findings in primary care, care homes and hospice settings. Secondly, the staff cohort who volunteered had mild COVID-19 disease as only 3 out of the whole COCO study cohort were admitted to hospital due to severe disease. Clearly therefore the findings of this study relate only to mild disease and do not reflect the potential effects of VDD in severe COVID-19 disease. Indeed our own data (unpublished) suggest that patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 have much lower levels of vitamin D than this staff cohort. Thirdly, due to relatively low numbers of BAME staff members in this cohort we were unable to analyse the differences between staff from different ethnicities. This may be important as it has been demonstrated for example that COVID-19 patients from Bangladeshi origin have worse outcomes from COVID-19 disease.8 Whether these differences reflect relevant changes in vitamin D metabolism, genetics, etc remain unknown. In conclusion, we have shown that in those healthcare workers who have isolated due to symptoms of COVID-19, those of BAME ethnicity are a...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.10.05.20206706v1 on medRxiv