Thoracic Investigates Relationship Between Covid and Asthma Patients

asthma and covid relationship

It stands to reason that if you suffer from asthma you are more likely to get affected by Covid19. This new study by atsjournals.org is meant to determine if this is the case.

A new research letter published online in the American Thoracic Society's Annals investigates whether asthma is a major risk factor for COVID-19 development that is sufficiently severe to require hospitalization and intubation.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people with asthma are at higher risk of hospitalization and other serious COVID-19 symptoms, comparable to the increased risk from health problems such as obesity, hypertension and diabetes.

In "Asthma in COVID-19 Hospitalizations: An Overestimated Risk Factor?," Fernando Holguin, MD, MPH, and co-authors contrasted the prevalence of asthma among COVID-19 hospitalized patients, as recorded in 15 peer-reviewed studies, with that of the asthma prevalence in the corresponding population.

They also compared the study's prevalence of asthma with the four-year average prevalence of asthma in US influenza hospitalizations.

They also studied the medical history of 436 COVID-19 patients admitted to the University of Colorado Hospital to determine the probability that asthma patients will be intubated more often than patients without asthma.

To classify studies documenting asthma prevalence in patients hospitalized for COVID-19 infection, the researchers conducted a systematic analysis of the English-language scientific literature. Using local data from hospitalized COVID-19 patients, they conducted a statistical study to establish the association between asthma status and intubation, after considering the age , gender and body mass index (BMI) of patients.

The authors said, "We found that the proportion of asthma among hospitalized COVID-19 patients is relatively close to the proportion of population asthma prevalence at each study site.

"We also found, using data from our hospital, that among COVID-19 patients, those with asthma with a prevalence rate of 12 percent did not seem to be more likely to be intubated than non-asthmatics," they added. People with allergy-related asthma can also have lower expression of ACE2, whether or not they are using corticosteroids.

This story first appeared on https://www.atsjournals.org