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Dear Editor
If NICE approves molnupiravir then surely it should approve a safer, more effective, cheaper and physiological agent.
The evidence base for "vitamin" D3 in innate and adaptive immunity is extensive and rapidly growing, For a recent over-view re Covid-19 see: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354376762_THE_INFLUENCE_OF_VITA...
D3 is not a drug, it has evolved and has physiology, and medical professors should question whether NICE or Cochrane should be empowered to dispute the use of D3 the basis of lack of big RCTs. D3 impacts a large range of diseases, and most academic medical departments ( and dental) seek to understand and treat conditions that are exacerbated by physiological D3-deficiency. If D3-ignoring continues much longer I have in mind a book "Medicine's Worst Ever (ongoing) Mistake".
Molnupiravir might be effective but logistics will be a challenge. It needs to be used early in the course of Covid-19, thus implying that it cannot really be targeted. It might be needed by 40,000 new Covid-19 patients each day, currently receiving no treatment prior to intensive care. The government's purchased stock might last for little more than ten days, and the cost of £500 per shot (stated by Forbes) is not insignificant, up to £20million per day.
I wonder if NICE will be as dismissive of Molnupiravir as it was of calcifediol, the activated and rapid-acting form of vitamin D more than a year ago. Calcifediol was obviously a beneficial treatment of which we have been denied despite complete safety and a price only one thousandth that of Molnupiravir.
The declining effectiveness of vaccines is almost certainly due to the exhaustion of already low levels of vitamin D by the intense immune process stimulated by vaccination. Vaccines need good immunity, which requires good blood levels of vitamin D as calcifediol, 25(OH)D. What we need now is an urgent need for the roll-out of vitamin D to boost the effectiveness and safety of vaccines and to improve the defensive immunity of the population. It is overdue, being needed early in 2020.
Re: Covid-19: UK becomes first country to authorise antiviral molnupiravir
Dear Editor
If NICE approves molnupiravir then surely it should approve a safer, more effective, cheaper and physiological agent.
The evidence base for "vitamin" D3 in innate and adaptive immunity is extensive and rapidly growing, For a recent over-view re Covid-19 see: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354376762_THE_INFLUENCE_OF_VITA...
D3 is not a drug, it has evolved and has physiology, and medical professors should question whether NICE or Cochrane should be empowered to dispute the use of D3 the basis of lack of big RCTs. D3 impacts a large range of diseases, and most academic medical departments ( and dental) seek to understand and treat conditions that are exacerbated by physiological D3-deficiency. If D3-ignoring continues much longer I have in mind a book "Medicine's Worst Ever (ongoing) Mistake".
Competing interests: No competing interests