key: cord-0748554-5gnr6vgb authors: Fong, Wei Chern Gavin; Borca, Florina; Phan, Hang; Moyses, Helen E.; Dennison, Paddy; Kurukulaaratchy, Ramesh J.; Haitchi, Hans Michael title: Asthma did not increase in‐hospital COVID‐19‐related mortality in a tertiary UK hospital date: 2021-03-02 journal: Clin Exp Allergy DOI: 10.1111/cea.13855 sha: 803b06c5c9caea8e4e229b71d15c4497bcc3f912 doc_id: 748554 cord_uid: 5gnr6vgb Asthma is the most prevalent chronic inflammatory respiratory disease worldwide affecting one in twelve adults (8.3%) in the United Kingdom (UK) (1). Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) has afflicted at least 80.3 million patients worldwide (17.3 million in the EU, 2.3 million in the UK), and has resulted in more than 1.6 million deaths (427,000 in the EU, 71,000 in the UK) (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control: 30/12/2020). It is still unclear how asthma affects Covid-19 related mortality with marked regional differences noted (2). gional differences noted. 2 Comorbid associations of COVID-19 with asthma were significantly lower than the prevalence of asthma in the regions studied. 3 Additionally, COVID-19 disease has not been shown to be more severe in patients with asthma 3,4 nor associated with increased mortality. 3 To assess the relationship between asthma and in-hospital COVID-19-related mortality, we conducted a retrospective analysis of the electronic healthcare record (EHR) at a large tertiary hospital in the South of England, University Hospital Southampton (UHS). We retrospectively reviewed anonymized and non-identifiable data from COVID-19 Reverse Transcriptase-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tested adult (age ≥18 years) patients with asthma (PWA) and patients with no asthma (PWNoA) who were admitted between 01 March and 31 May 2020. This was performed as part of an asthma service evaluation that was registered at UHS. Asthma status, demographics and co-morbidities were based on ICD (International Classification of Disease) codes from the EHR. Asthma diagnosis reflected a physician diagnosis of asthma made in either Primary or Secondary Care following conventional diagnostic practice. 5 Severe asthma (SA) was defined as patients managed with British Thoracic Society 'high dose therapies' and/or 'continuous or frequent use of oral corticosteroids'. 5 Hazard ratios for co-morbidities are comparing co-morbidity present vs. not present. The bold values mean that the comparisons are statistically significant of less than .05. Asthma facts and statistics Is asthma protective against COVID-19? Allergy Does asthma affect morbidity or severity of COVID-19? Risk factors for severity and mortality in adult COVID-19 inpatients in Wuhan BTS/SIGN Guideline on the management of asthma Rhinovirus 16-induced IFN-α and IFN-β are deficient in bronchoalveolar lavage cells in asthmatic patients Factors associated with COVID-19-related death using OpenSAFELY The inhaled steroid ciclesonide blocks SARS-CoV-2 RNA replication by targeting the viral replication-transcription complex in cultured cells The impact of the first COVID-19 surge on severe asthma patients in the UK. Which is worse: the virus or the lockdown? The authors declare no conflict of interest. WCGF contributed to conception and design, analysis and interpretation of data and co-wrote the manuscript. FB and HP contributed to acquisition of data from the electronic health records and interpretation of data. HEM contributed to statistical analysis and interpretation of the data. PD and RJK contributed to the interpretation of data. HMH developed the concept and design, contributed to analysis and interpretation of the data and co-wrote the manuscript.All authors provided critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content. The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.