Hair loss in females and thromboembolism in males are significantly enriched in post-acute sequelae of COVID (PASC) relative to recent medical history

  1. Elliot Akama-Garren
  2. Praveen Anand
  3. Tudor Cristea-Platon
  4. Patrick Lenehan
  5. Emily Lindemer
  6. Sairam Bade
  7. Saran Liukasemsarn
  8. John C. O’Horo
  9. Ryan T. Hurt
  10. Amy W. Williams
  11. Gregory J. Gores
  12. Andrew D. Badley
  13. Samir Awasthi
  14. Venky Soundararajan

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Abstract

After one year of the COVID-19 pandemic, over 130 million individuals worldwide have been infected with the novel coronavirus, yet the post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC), also referred to as the ‘long COVID’ syndrome, remains mostly uncharacterized. We leveraged machine-augmented curation of the physician notes from electronic health records (EHRs) across the multi-state Mayo Clinic health system to retrospectively contrast the occurrence of symptoms and diseases in COVID-19 patients in the post-COVID period relative to the pre-COVID period (n=6,413). Through comparison of the frequency of 10,039 signs and symptoms before and after diagnosis, we identified an increase in hypertensive chronic kidney disease (OR 47.3, 95% CI 23.9-93.6, p=3.50×10 −9 ), thromboembolism (OR 3.84, 95% CI 3.22-4.57, p=1.18×10 −4 ), and hair loss (OR 2.44, 95% CI 2.15-2.76, p=8.46×10 −3 ) in COVID-19 patients three to six months after diagnosis. The sequelae associated with long COVID were notably different among male vs female patients and patients above vs under 55 years old, with the hair loss enrichment found primarily in females and the thromboembolism enrichment in males. These findings compel targeted investigations into what may be persistent dermatologic, cardiovascular, and coagulopathic phenotypes following SARS-CoV-2 infection.

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  1. Version published to 10.1101/2021.01.03.20248997v2 on medRxiv
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    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.01.03.20248997: (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

    No key resources detected.

    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.

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.01.03.20248997v1 on medRxiv