Facemask Usage Among People With Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Participatory Project

  1. Eva S. L. Pedersen
  2. Eugenie N. R. Collaud
  3. Rebeca Mozun
  4. Katie Dexter
  5. Catherine Kruljac
  6. Hansruedi Silberschmidt
  7. Jane S. Lucas
  8. COVID-PCD patient advisory group

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Abstract

Objectives: Primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) is a rare genetic disease that causes recurrent respiratory infections. People with PCD may be at high risk of severe COVID-19 and protection against SARS-CoV-2 is therefore important. We studied facemask usage and problems reported in relation with their use among people with PCD.

Methods: We used data from COVID-PCD, an international observational cohort study. A questionnaire was e-mailed to participants in October 2020 that asked about facemask usage.

Results: In total, 282 participants from 27 countries were included (Median age 32 years; 63% female). In total, 252 (89%) wore facemasks everywhere in public, 13 (5%) wore facemasks in most places, and 17 (6%) did not wear facemasks in public. Half of the participants reported that it was uncomfortable to wear facemasks because of runny nose, cough, or difficulty breathing. Participants less often wore facemasks when there was no national requirement.

Conclusion: Most people with PCD wore facemasks despite frequent respiratory problems related to their use. Facemask usage was most frequent in countries with a national requirement emphasizing the importance of nationwide policies mandating facemasks.

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  1. Version published to 10.3389/ijph.2021.1604277
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.13.21255393: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: The Cantonal Ethics Committee of Bern approved the study (Study ID: 2020-00830).
    Consent: Informed consent to participate is provided online at the time of registration into the study.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    They answered questions online, and data were saved in a Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) database, developed at Vanderbilt University (www.project-redcap.org) [27], which is securely hosted by the Swiss medical registries and data linkage centre (SwissRDL) at the University of Bern, Switzerland.
    REDCap
    suggested: (REDCap, RRID:SCR_003445)
    We used STATA version 14 for statistical analysis.
    STATA
    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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Another limitation of our study was that only half of the population completed the questionnaire about mask use. Many participants were too young to wear a mask regularly and some parents may not have completed the questionnaire for this reason. This was confirmed by those who completed the facemask questionnaire being older than those who did not (additional file 2). To our knowledge, this study is the first to describe facemask usage and related problems in people with a chronic disease during the COVID-19 pandemic. Few studies have reported on facemask usage in the general population, and they included only local populations making them unsuitable for direct comparison with our study [11, 28]. In a US survey of 1056 adults conducted in May 2020, 825 (79%) reported to wear a mask. The study included no information on places where facemasks were worn or frequency of use [28]. Similarly, in a cross-sectional online survey from Brazil conducted in July 2020, 1266 of 1277 (99%) said that they used facemasks but with no specification of where and how often [11]. The study further showed that two thirds of the participants (67%) were bothered by facemask in some way; 55% because of shortness of breath, 50% because of pain around the ears, and 44% because of glasses fogging. In our study, only 50% of people with PCD reported that facemasks were uncomfortable for any reason. A possible explanation may be that people with PCD are used to breathing problems in general and their thres...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: We found the following clinical trial numbers in your paper:

    IdentifierStatusTitle
    NCT04602481RecruitingCOVID-19 in People With Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia

    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.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.04.13.21255393 on medRxiv