Prevalence of COVID-19-related risk factors and risk of severe influenza outcomes in cancer survivors: A matched cohort study using linked English electronic health records data

  1. Helena Carreira
  2. Helen Strongman
  3. Maria Peppa
  4. Helen I. McDonald
  5. Isabel dos-Santos-Silva
  6. Susannah Stanway
  7. Liam Smeeth
  8. Krishnan Bhaskaran

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Abstract

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.08.20209304: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    9 CPRD GOLD comprises routinely collected clinical and administrative data from general practices in the UK that use Vision software and have chosen to participate; approximately 7% of the UK population is included.
    GOLD
    suggested: (GOLD, RRID:SCR_000188)
    Linked International Classification of Diseases, version 10 (ICD-10) coded HES APC and NCRAS data improve ascertainment of diseases treated in secondary care.
    Diseases
    suggested: None

    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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    There are some important limitations. We analysed severe influenza in an attempt to inform COVID-19 policy but despite both being infectious respiratory illnesses, it is not certain that risk factors for severe influenza will have the same associations with COVID-19. Our approach follows that of policy makers who have assumed parallels with influenza in the absence of mature COVID-19 data.27 As data from the COVID-19 pandemic itself have started to flow, they have largely confirmed a broad overlap between those at high risk for seasonal influenza and for severe COVID-19 outcomes.11 Another limitation was that we did not have data on anti-cancer treatments, so could not separate cancer survivors into those under active treatment or not undergoing any treatment, which may be an important determinant of risk. We only included cancer survivors at least one year out from diagnosis, so it is likely that most patients with high-grade malignancies would have completed primary treatment, but people with low-grade tumours could conceivably have received anticancer therapies some years after initial diagnosis, which could explain part of the medium- to long-term increased risk of severe influenza; linked cancer treatment data will be needed to investigate this further. We cannot rule out that differences in the prevalence of risk factors between cancer survivors and controls five years post-diagnosis may be due to increased contact with health services, particularly for diseases such as...

    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

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1016/j.eclinm.2020.100656
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.10.08.20209304v1 on medRxiv