Parkinson's Disease-COVID-19: University Of Iowa Study Shows That Patients With Parkinson's Disease Have A Higher Mortality Risk With COVID-19
Source: Parkinson's Disease-COVID-19 Oct 02, 2020 3 years, 6 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 27 minutes ago
Parkinson's Disease-COVID-19: Researchers from University of Iowa in a new study involving approximately 80,000 patients shows that individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) have a 30% higher risk of dying from COVID-19 than individuals without the neurodegenerative condition.
The study findings were published in the journal: Movement Disorders, the official journal of the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mds.28325
Case fatality rates (CFR) of the COVID-19 have been reported ranging from 0% to 40% among Parkinson's disease patients. However, because of small sample sizes and the lack of large matched comparison groups, previous studies have not clarified whether Parkinson's disease is an independent risk factor for death. The goal of the study was to determine whether Parkinson's disease patients had a higher COVID-19 CFR.
The detailed meta-analysis conducted by researchers with University of Iowa Health Care based on patient data in the TriNetX COVID-19 research network suggests that Parkinson's disease is an independent risk factor for dying from COVID-19.
The study team led by neurologists Dr Qiang Zhang, MD, and Dr Nandakumar Narayanan, MD, Ph.D., identified the COVID-19 patient cohort as of July 15 and analyzed the mortality data eight weeks later. They found that 5.5% (4,290 out of 78,355) of COVID-19 patients without Parkinson's disease died compared to 21.3% (148 of 694) COVID-19 patients who also had Parkinson's Disease.
Interestingly, the patients with Parkinson's disease were generally older, more likely to be male, and less likely to be African American than the patients without Parkinson's disease. All of these factors also increase the risk of death from COVID-19.
Hence the study team used two approaches to account for these differences: logistic regression with age, sex, and race as covariates, and matching each Parkinson's disease patient with five non- Parkinson's disease patients with the exact age, sex, and race, and performing a conditional logistic regression. In both cases, the researchers found that the risk of dying from COVID-19 was 30% higher for patients with Parkinson's disease.
Dr Narayanan, University of Iowa Associate Professor of neurology and a member of the Iowa Neuroscience Institute told Thailand Medical News, "We recognize the limitations of this study; it is retrospective data from a single database, but we are confident that these data show that Parkinson's disease is independent risk factor for death in COVID-19. We believe this observation will be of interest to clinicians treating patients with Parkinson's disease, and public health officials."
The study team says the findings should also inform patients with Parkinson's disease, and their physicians, of the increased importance of preventing COVID-19 infection in these patients.
Dr Zhang, an associate in the UI Department of Neurology said, "For our own patients, we can give advice that it's important that you wear a mask.
It's important that you socially distance."
Dr Zhang adds that doctors should also weigh the increased risk of death from COVID-19 when considering how to care for Parkinson's disease patients in person during the pandemic.
It is speculated that a possible reason why Parkinson's disease patients have an increased risk of death from COVID-19 may be related to the fact that COVID can cause pneumonia and pneumonia is a leading cause of death in patients with Parkinson's disease. This is partly because Parkinson's patients can have trouble swallowing or choking that can cause aspiration.
Dr Narayanan added, "We are all focused on COVID-19 right now, but this is a clear example of a respiratory illness that leads to increased mortality in Parkinson's disease patients. These study findings may also have implications for understanding risks for Parkinson's disease patients from other diseases, including influenza. I would recommend a flu vaccine and pneumonia vaccine to try to prevent these problems in patients with Parkinson's disease."
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