Hospitalised covid patients are younger, healthier than influenza patients: Study

Various studies are being conducted around the globe every day to understand the novel coronavirus better. Because it’s only when we understand how the SARS-CoV-2 functions, that we will be able to contain the pandemic. And that’s exactly what scientists have been doing for the past few months. 

For a recent paper published by the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI), scientists conducted a global network study, which included more than 34,000 covid patients from across three continents. 

The study intended to provide greater detail about the characteristics of patients suffering from the disease, and also to help inform decision-making around the care of hospitalised patients.

The study “Deep phenotyping of 34,128 adult patients hospitalised with covid in an international network study” was published by Nature Communications.

The study observed…
Patients hospitalised with covid were more typically male in the US and Spain, but more often female in South Korea. The ages of patients varied, but in Spain and the US, the most common age groups were between 60 to 75. 

Whereas patients hospitalised with influenza were typically older than those hospitalised with covid and more likely to be female.

Also, read: Just recovered from coronavirus? Take these precautions to prevent reinfection

Many of the patients hospitalised with covid were seen to have comorbidities. For example, across the data sources, the prevalence of hypertensive disorder ranged from 24% to 70%, diabetes from 13% to 43%, and asthma from 4% to 15%. 

However, when compared to patients hospitalised with influenza in recent years, those with covid were seen to be healthier. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cardiovascular disease and dementia were all more common among those hospitalised with influenza compared to those hospitalised with covid.

The co-lead author Edward Burn says, “This study has allowed us to better understand the profiles of patients hospitalised with covid. Despite recent discourse around the supposed poor health and limited life expectancy of covid patients, we see covid patients be in no worse health than those typically hospitalised with influenza.”

“The most interesting part of this study is that it was possible to provide the details of patients’ characteristics across institutions without violating their privacy,” said co-lead author Seng Chan You.

Patrick Ryan, co-senior author of this study says, “Our community collaborated for years to develop the high-level analytics which set the course for these studies. Our belief in both openly sharing patient data allowed us to generate this reliable, reproducible covid patient data that will assist in important decision-making as we fight this disease.”