Is sickle cell disease a risk factor for severe COVID‐19 outcomes in hospitalized patients? A multicenter national retrospective cohort study

  1. Abdulkarim Abdulrahman
  2. Mohammed Wael
  3. Fajer AlAmmadi
  4. Zahra Almosawi
  5. Reem Alsherooqi
  6. Manal Abduljalil
  7. Nitya Kumar
  8. Manaf AlQahtani

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Abstract

Introduction

Studies that examine the association between sickle cell disease (SCD) and COVID‐19 outcomes are lacking. This study aims to determine whether SCD is a risk factor for severe COVID‐19 infection in regard to the requirement of noninvasive ventilation/high flow nasal cannula (NIV/HFNC), mechanical ventilation (MV), or death in hospitalized patients.

Methods

Retrospective cohort study included COVID‐19 patients admitted to four COVID‐19 treatment facilities in Bahrain between February 24, 2020 and July 31, 2020. All SCD patients with COVID‐19 were included and compared to a randomly selected sample of non‐SCD patients with COVID‐19. Data were collected from the medical records. Multivariate logistic regression models were used to control for confounders and estimate the effect of SCD on the outcomes.

Results

1792 patients with COVID‐19 were included; 38 of whom were diagnosed with SCD as well. In the SCD group, one (2.6%) patient required NIV/HFNC, one (2.6%) required MV, and one (2.6%) death occurred. In comparison, 56 (3.2%) of the non‐SCD patients required NIV/HFNC, 47 (2.7%) required MV, and death occurred in 58 (3.3%) patients. Upon adjusting for confounders, SCD had an odds ratio of 1.847 (95% CI: 0.39–8.83; p = 0.442).

Conclusion

Our results indicate that SCD is not a risk factor for worse COVID‐19 outcomes in hospitalized patients.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.30.20249053: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: All methods and retrospective analysis of data was approved by the National COVID-19 Research and Ethics Committee, and carried out in accordance with the local guideline and ethical guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki 1975.
    Consent: Informed consent was waived by the National COVID-19 Research and Ethics Committee for this study due to its retrospective and observational nature and the absence of any patient identifying information.
    RandomizationPatients without SCD were sampled randomly from this COVID-19 study cohort.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    The STATA software, version 15.1, was used to execute the statistical analyses, (StataCorp. 2017. Stata Statistical Software: Release 15.
    STATA
    suggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)
    StataCorp
    suggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1002/jha2.170
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.12.30.20249053v1 on medRxiv