Asthma Found to Have Profound Impact on COVID-19 Patients in New Study
Patients with Asthma Were Twice as Likely to be Hospitalized and Five Times as Likely to Die
Patients with asthma hospitalized for COVID-19 experienced a much more severe outcome than those without asthma, according to a new study that was conducted by New York Medical College faculty and presented by Antony Arumairaj, M.D., assistant professor of medicine, at the American Thoracic Society International Conference in May.
The study, which included 339,873 adults hospitalized with COVID-19 who were reported by the National Inpatient Sample 2020, was commenced after previous studies offered conflicting evidence about asthma's impact on COVID-19 outcomes.
“There are some clinical studies which showed that it was a protective factor. Some said it was a high-risk factor,” said Dr. Arumairaj. “So we decided to do a national patient sample analysis.”
According to their analysis, patients with asthma were nearly twice as likely to be hospitalized for COVID-19 and almost five times more likely to die compared to patients without asthma.
As this study reflects preliminary results, Dr. Arumairaj and his co-researchers plan to continue their analysis to incorporate comorbidities, whether patients were hospitalized in teaching or nonteaching hospitals, and if they were in tertiary, rural, or suburban hospitals.
“This is a preliminary analysis, we have to do the final analysis with adjustments for other possible confounders before we can actually come to a conclusion,” said Dr. Arumairaj. “Then we will have a much clearer picture.”
Portions of this article were excerpted from Healio.com.