The study shows the reduction in asthma exacerbations during the COVID-19 pandemic

April 02, 2021

2 min read

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The researchers reported a significant decrease in asthma exacerbations during the COVID-19 pandemic in all ages, genders, and most regions of England.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first national-level study to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on primary or secondary care participation in asthma exacerbations,” said Dr. Syed A. Shah, Registrar at the Asthma UK Center for Applied Research, Center for Medical Informatics, Usher Institute at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and colleagues wrote in thorax.

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Researchers performed an intermittent time series analysis of 9,949,387 patients with asthma (60.1% women) identified using the Optimum Patient Care Database. The researchers obtained asthma exacerbation rates for each week and compared the rates from January to August 2020 with a period before COVID-19 and from January to August 2016 to 2019. The only intervention period for the analysis was the week of March 23, 2020, which the embargo began in England.

Asthma exacerbations were defined as asthma-related hospitalization / admission or an acute course of oral corticosteroids with evidence of airway review recorded by a GP.

In the cohort, 100,165 patients experienced at least one asthma exacerbation from 2016 to 2020. Of the 278,996 recorded asthma exacerbation episodes, 17.9% required a hospital visit.

Researchers reported a reduction in asthma exacerbation episodes after ineligibility compared to before inelegation (-0.196 episodes per person-year; P <0.001).

Most asthma exacerbations did not require hospitalization / admission and were resolved in primary care.

Asthma exacerbations were slightly more common in women than in men (0.976 versus 1.09). Among the age groups, people aged 55 and over had the highest rate of asthma exacerbations (1.305), followed by people aged 18 to 54 years (0.919), people aged 0 to 5 years (0.839), and people aged 5 to 17 years (1.85). 0.618). In all regions of England, people living in the West Midlands had the highest rate of asthma exacerbations (1.383), followed by the Northeast (1.205). Those who lived in London had the lowest exacerbation rate, according to the results (0.639).

“This reduction in the rate of exacerbations was mainly seen in association with exacerbations that were resolved in primary care without the need for hospital visits,” the researchers wrote. “More work is needed to examine the factors responsible for this decline.”

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