Risk of cardiovascular events following COVID-19 in people with and without pre-existing chronic respiratory disease
Hannah Whittaker, Constantinos Kallis, Thomas Bolton, Angela Wood, Samantha Walker, Aziz Sheikh, Alex Brownrigg, Ashley Akbari, Kamil Sterniczuk, Jennifer K Quint, on behalf of the CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT Consortium
We plan to investigate whether people with pre-existing chronic lung diseases who develop COVID-19 have a higher risk of heart attacks, stroke, and blood clots in the lungs compared with people with COVID-19 without pre-existing lung disease. People with chronic lung diseases will include those with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, bronchiectasis, cystic fibrosis, and interstitial lung disease.
An international research prioritisation exercise was undertaken by members of this team in collaboration with Asthma UK-British Lung Foundation. We asked people with underlying lung diseases what the priorities should be for further research and investigation. The research question for this research was then developed from this consultation.
We will collaborate with researchers to use UK-wide de-identified patient data to answer this question. These data sit in secure and safe research environments with several data sources linked together, including primary care, hospital data, death registry data, COVID-19 testing and vaccination data.
This research is of public benefit as we will answer important questions we know patients and the public want answered. We will add value to these data, sharing expertise and data on lung disease. Findings will help better understand complications following COVID-19 in people with lung disease, if we should be treating them differently or even if some treatments taken for lung disease protect from some COVID-19 complications. Our work could be used to develop disease specific risk models’ clinicians can use to predict an individual's risk, communicate the risk effectively or design a personalised follow-up schedule which reassures the patient.
Whittaker H, Kallis C, Bolton T, et al. Risk of cardiovascular events following COVID-19 in people with and without pre-existing chronic respiratory disease. Int J Epidemiol. 2024;53(3):dyae068. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyae068
- View the analysis code used in NHS England's SDE for England
- View the phenotyping algorithms and codelists used in NHS England's SDE for England
This is a sub-project of project CCU035 approved by the CVD-COVID-UK / COVID-IMPACT Approvals & Oversight Board (sub-project: CCU035_01).
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