Characteristics and outcomes of an international cohort of 600 000 hospitalized patients with COVID-19

  • ISARIC Clinical Characterisation Group
  • , Christiana Kartsonaki*
  • , J. Kenneth Baillie
  • , Noelia García Barrio
  • , Joaquín Baruch
  • , Abigail Beane
  • , Lucille Blumberg
  • , Fernando Bozza
  • , Tessa Broadley
  • , Aidan Burrell
  • , Gail Carson
  • , Barbara Wanjiru Citarella
  • , Andrew Dagens
  • , Emmanuelle A. Dankwa
  • , Christl A. Donnelly
  • , Jake Dunning
  • , Loubna Elotmani
  • , Martina Escher
  • , Nataly Farshait
  • , Jean Christophe Goffard
  • Bronner P. Gonçalves, Matthew Hall, Madiha Hashmi, Benedict Sim Lim Heng, Antonia Ho, Waasila Jassat, Miguel Pedrera Jiménez, Cedric Laouenan, Samantha Lissauer, Ignacio Martin-Loeches, France Mentré, Laura Merson, Ben Morton, Daniel Munblit, Nikita A. Nekliudov, Alistair D. Nichol, Budha Charan Singh Oinam, David Ong, Prasan Kumar Panda, Amanda Rojek, Piero L Olliaro
*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

48 Citations (Scopus)
204 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Background: We describe demographic features, treatments and clinical outcomes in the International Severe Acute Respiratory and emerging Infection Consortium (ISARIC) COVID-19 cohort, one of the world’s largest international, standardized data sets concerning hospitalized patients.

Methods: The data set analysed includes COVID-19 patients hospitalized between January 2020 and January 2022 in 52 countries. We investigated how symptoms on admission, co-morbidities, risk factors and treatments varied by age, sex and other characteristics. We used Cox regression models to investigate associations between demographics, symptoms, co-morbidities and other factors with risk of death, admission to an intensive care unit (ICU) and invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV).

Results: Data were available for 689 572 patients with laboratory-confirmed (91.1%) or clinically diagnosed (8.9%) SARS-CoV-2 infection from 52 countries. Age [adjusted hazard ratio per 10 years 1.49 (95% CI 1.48, 1.49)] and male sex [1.23 (1.21, 1.24)] were associated with a higher risk of death. Rates of admission to an ICU and use of IMV increased with age up to age 60 years then dropped. Symptoms, co-morbidities and treatments varied by age and had varied associations with clinical outcomes. The case-fatality ratio varied by country partly due to differences in the clinical characteristics of recruited patients and was on average 21.5%.

Conclusions: Age was the strongest determinant of risk of death, with a ~30-fold difference between the oldest and youngest groups; each of the co-morbidities included was associated with up to an almost 2-fold increase in risk. Smoking and obesity were also associated with a higher risk of death. The size of our international database and the standardized data collection method make this study a comprehensive international description of COVID-19 clinical features. Our findings may inform strategies that involve prioritization of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 who have a higher risk of death.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)355-376
Number of pages22
JournalInternational Journal of Epidemiology
Volume52
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1-Apr-2023

Keywords

  • co-morbidities
  • cohort study
  • COVID-19
  • risk of death
  • SARS-CoV-2
  • symptoms
  • treatments

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