Covid-19: vitamin D levels fell during pandemic
A research team led by LMU epidemiologist Professor Eva Grill has demonstrated for the first time at the population level that vitamin D levels were significantly lower during the pandemic than before
05.12.2025
As well as furnishing surprising insights, “our study shows that routine medical care data can be an early warning system for public health,” emphasizes Eva Grill. “They allow us to quickly recognize trends such as the fall in certain nutrient levels or an increase in risk factors”.
This study used routinely-collected laboratory data from a large real-world data platform to compare vitamin D levels before versus during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were extracted from laboratory information systems (LIS) to provide standardized, high-quality vitamin D measurements. We applied three different analytical approaches—namely, descriptive analysis, propensity score matching, and machine learning—to quantify confounder-adjusted changes. Results consistently indicate a significant reduction in mean vitamin D levels during the pandemic, highlighting the value of LIS-derived real-world data for public health monitoring. Created in BioRender. Skapetze, L. (2025) https://BioRender.com/ljfkj2l.