Two researchers at Sainte-Justine Hospital in Montreal will share $6.3 million in funding to study the usefulness of vitamin D in fighting COVID-19, as well as the risk of reinfection in healthcare workers.
These major grants awarded to doctors Francine M. Ducharme and Caroline Quach-Thanh by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) will allow them to carry out their work in the coming months.
"COVID is a viral infection (...) but people who are very sick, who go to intensive care, it's because they have a disproportionate inflammatory reaction, we call it the cytokine storm," said Ducharme, who received $4.2 million. "The property of high doses of vitamin D to perhaps decrease or prevent this disproportionate increase in the inflammatory response could be very interesting."