Among those hospitalized with COVID-19, patients with asthma had better outcomes and lower risk of death compared to people with no airway disease or those with COPD, according to research published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice.
Yale School of Medicine researchers say COVID-19 patients with COPD had more severe disease on average and higher mortality compared to those with asthma or those with no airway disease.
Researchers compared mortality and sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA) scores for 8,395 patients admitted with COVID-19.
Data showed:
- patients without airway disease: median SOFA score was 0.32 and mortality was 11%.
- asthma patients median had lower SOFA score was 0.15 and decreased mortality, even after adjusting for age, diabetes and other confounders (odds ratio (OR) = 0.65).
- COPD patients had median SOFA score was 0.86 and increased adjusted odds of mortality (OR = 1.40;
The study found that asthma patients showed improved outcomes even after adjusting for eosinophilia, indicating that non-eosinophilic asthma was associated with protection as well.
Researchers concluded that:
“COVID-19 severity was increased in patients with COPD and decreased in those with asthma, eosinophilia, and non-eosinophilic asthma, independent of clinical confounders. These findings suggest that COVID-19 severity may be influenced by intrinsic immunologic factors in patients with airway diseases, such as T2 inflammation.”
Read the article here.
