Clinical, regional, and genetic characteristics of Covid-19 patients from UK Biobank
David A Kolin, Scott Kulm, Paul J Christos, Olivier Elemento
PLOS ONE, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0241264
Background Coronavirus disease 2019 has rapidly infected millions of people worldwide. Recent studies suggest that racial minorities and patients with comorbidities are at higher risk of Covid-19. In this study, we analyzed the effects of clinical, regional, and genetic factors on Covid-19 positive status.
Methods The UK Biobank is a longitudinal cohort study that recruited participants from 2006 to 2010 from throughout the United Kingdom. Covid-19 test results were provided to UK Biobank starting on March 16, 2020. The main outcome measure in this study was Covid-19 positive status, determined by the presence of any positive test for a single individual. Clinical risk factors were derived from UK Biobank at baseline, and regional risk factors were imputed using census features local to each participant's home zone. We used robust adjusted Poisson regression with clustering by testing laboratory to estimate relative risk. Blood types were derived using genetic variants rs8176719 and rs8176746, and genomewide tests of association were conducted using logistic-Firth hybrid regression.
Results This prospective cohort study included 397,064 UK Biobank participants, of whom 968 tested positive for Covid-19. The unadjusted relative risk of Covid-19 for Black participants was 3.66 (95% CI 2.83-4.74), compared to White participants. Adjusting for Townsend deprivation index alone reduced the relative risk to 2.44 (95% CI 1.86-3.20). Comorbidities that significantly increased Covid-19 risk included chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (adjusted relative risk [ARR] 1.64, 95% CI 1.18-2.27), ischemic heart disease (ARR 1.48, 95% CI 1.16-1.89), and depression (ARR 1.32, 95% CI 1.03-1.70). There was some evidence that angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors (ARR 1.48, 95% CI 1.13-1.93) were associated with increased risk of Covid-19. Each standard deviation increase in the number of total individuals living in a participant's locality was associated with increased risk of ). Analyses of genetically inferred blood types
Supporting information
S1 Appendix. (DOCX)
Author Contributions Conceptualization: David A. Kolin, Scott Kulm, Olivier Elemento.
Data curation
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