COVID-19 and mortality risk in patients with psychiatric disorders

  1. George Kirov
  2. Emily Baker

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Abstract

COVID-19 has already caused the deaths of over 2.5 million people worldwide. Patients with certain medical conditions and severe psychiatric disorders are at increased risk of dying from it. However, such people have a reduced life expectancy anyway, raising the question whether COVID-19 incurs a specific risk for such patients for dying, over and above the risk of dying from other causes.

We analysed the UK Biobank data of half a million middle-aged participants from the UK. From the start of 2020 up to 24 th January 2021, 894 participants had died from COVID-19 and another 4,562 had died from other causes. We demonstrate that the risk of dying from COVID-19 among patients with mental health problems, especially those with dementia, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder, is increased compared to the risk of dying from other causes. This increase among patients with severe psychiatric disorders cannot be explained solely by the higher rate of diabetes or cardiovascular disorders.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.08.21255046: (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.
    • No funding statement was detected.
    • 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 10.1101/2021.04.08.21255046 on medRxiv