Royal Oldham Hospital

In the VITdAL-ICU trial using a large oral dose of vitamin D3 in 480 adult critically ill patients, there was no benefit regarding the primary endpoint hospital length of stay. However, the predefined subgroup with severe vitamin D deficiency (25(OH)D ≤ 12ng/ml) had significantly lower 28-day mortality (36.3% placebo vs. 20.4% vitamin D group, hazard ratio (HR) 0.52 (0.30-0.89), number needed to treat = 6). Therefore, high-dose vitamin D3 in a population of severely vitamin D deficient critically ill patients is a promising and inexpensive intervention that requires confirmatory multicenter studies.
To date, only 7 interventions (e.g. noninvasive ventilation or prone positioning) have ever demonstrated mortality benefit for Intensive Care Unit (ICU) patients in multicenter trials. In case of benefit, vitamin D treatment in critically ill patients could be immediately implemented worldwide.

Kawasaki disease (KD) is an acute self-limited vasculitis of infancy and early childhood. Most patients recover without sequelae although the inflammatory process causes permanent damage to the coronary arteries in 20-25% of untreated children. An infectious aetiology is suspected, but the causative agent has not been identified. The investigators aim to identify the genes underlying both susceptibility to Kawasaki disease, and the development of coronary artery aneurysms.