The research, published in the journal BMJ Open, also found that having a prescription for methotrexate, an antibolic drug, mitigated folic acid’s negative effect on COVID-19 when folic acid and methotrexate were given together.
The team studied a giant cohort of patients enrolled in the UK’s BioBank, a giant biomedical database containing data on the fitness of half a million people.
“We looked at whether the diagnosis and death of COVID-19 were similar to the maximum doses of folic acid (five times the maximum limit) prescribed to patients for a variety of medically approved indications. We found that the risk of inflammation and death from COVID-19 was particularly higher in the organization treated with folic acid,” said Ralph Green, a vitamin B expert. Green is a leading professor in the Uc Davis Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and co-senior author of the study.
Folic acid and COVID-19
Folic acid is a form of vitamin B9, also known as folate. Low levels of B9 are associated with fitness disorders, such as an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, and birth defects.
Folic acid is prescribed for several conditions, including sickle cell anemia, high-risk pregnancies, and other people receiving antiepileptic medications. Folic acid is also prescribed to compensate for some side effects in patients taking methotrexate.
Methotrexate is used to treat certain types of cancer and autoimmune diseases. The drug is an “antifolate,” which interferes with folate, which cancer cells want to proliferate.
Green encouraged through studies published last year in Nature Communications that suggested that the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, diverts folate from the host for viral replication. This suggests that the virus may be susceptible to both folate and folate. inhibitors such as
To determine whether folic acid was linked to a higher COVID-19 threat and whether methotrexate was linked to a lower threat, the researchers analyzed prescription data for folic acid and methotrexate from 2019 to 2021 on 380,380 participants in the UK biobank.
They met another 26,033 people with COVID-19, 820 of whom died from COVID-19. People with a prescription for methotrexate were diagnosed with COVID-19 at a rate similar to that of the general population in the study.
However, other people with a prescription for folic acid were diagnosed with COVID-19 infections at a higher rate (5. 99%) and had a much higher COVID-19 death rate (15. 97%) than the group.
“Our findings may have implications for patients who take more folate to avoid headaches from other drug therapies,” L said. Gaffo, co-director and associate professor of medicine in the Division of Rheumatology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Although it is obviously indicated to take folate in such cases, doctors deserve to be careful with excessive folate consumption. Of course, our effects will require replication. “
The researchers note that due to the composition of the UK Biobank data, the existing effects are limited to other people over the age of forty-five who are basically of the white European ethnicities of the UK population.
The study did not look at the participants’ serum folate levels. They noted that more research is needed to explore the effect of folic acid prestige and folic acid intake on susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection and its deadly complications.
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