Impact of COVID-19 Restrictions on Acute Gastroenteritis in Children: A Regional, Danish, Register-Based Study.

This study aimed to evaluate the impact of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) restrictions such as social distancing on the occurrence of acute gastroenteritis (AGE) among children. This study is a register-based study, including every child seen in the departments of paediatrics with the initial diagnosis of AGE in three neighbouring hospitals in Denmark, from March 2018 through February 2021. The study also included every positive stool sample for AGE-causing pathogens analysed in these three hospitals from children during the same period. The Wilcoxon rank-sum test was used to determine differences between the period during the SARS-CoV-2 restrictions and before. In all, 222,157 children were seen in the three paediatric departments during this period. Of these, 3917 children were diagnosed with AGE. We found a decrease of 46.6% in AGE-related visits per month after the SARS-CoV-2 restrictions were introduced compared to before (p-value < 0.001). Positive stool samples decreased by 38.2% (p-value = 0.008) during the restrictions. This study found that cases of paediatric AGE decreased significantly the during COVID-19 restrictions, suggesting that studies should be conducted to determine whether this reduction was a result of good hand hygiene and social distancing or just a result of altered health-seeking behaviour among children.

Swiss QUality of life and healthcare impact Assessment in a Real-world Erenumab treated migraine population (SQUARE study): interim results.

BACKGROUND: The fully human monoclonal antibody erenumab, which targets the calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) receptor, was licensed in Switzerland in July 2018 for the prophylactic treatment of migraine. To complement findings from the pivotal program, this observational study was designed to collect and evaluate clinical data on the impact of erenumab on several endpoints, such as quality of life, migraine-related impairment and treatment satisfaction in a real-world setting. METHODS: An interim analysis was conducted after all patients completed 6 months of erenumab treatment. Patients kept a headache diary and completed questionnaires at follow up visits. The overall study duration comprises 24 months. RESULTS: In total, 172 adults with chronic or episodic migraine from 19 different sites across Switzerland were enrolled to receive erenumab every 4 weeks. At baseline, patients had 16.6 ± 7.2 monthly migraine days (MMD) and 11.6 ± 7.0 acute migraine-specific medication days per month. After 6 months, erenumab treatment reduced Headache Impact Test (HIT-6™) scores by 7.7 ± 8.4 (p < 0.001), the modified Migraine Disability Assessment (mMIDAS) by 14.1 ± 17.8 (p < 0.001), MMD by 7.6 ± 7.0 (p < 0.001) and acute migraine-specific medication days per month by 6.6 ± 5.4 (p < 0.001). Erenumab also reduced the impact of migraine on social and family life, as evidenced by a reduction of Impact of Migraine on Partners and Adolescent Children (IMPAC) scores by 6.1 ± 6.7 (p < 0.001). Patients reported a mean effectiveness of 67.1, convenience of 82.4 and global satisfaction of 72.4 in the Treatment Satisfaction Questionnaire for Medication (TSQM-9). In total, 99 adverse events (AE) and 12 serious adverse events (SAE) were observed in 62 and 11 patients, respectively. All SAE were regarded as not related to the study medication. CONCLUSIONS: Overall quality of life improved and treatment satisfaction was rated high with erenumab treatment in real-world clinical practice. In addition, the reported impact of migraine on spouses and children of patients was reduced. TRIAL REGISTRATION: BASEC ID 2018-02,375 in the Register of All Projects in Switzerland (RAPS).

Population-based Incidence of Myopericarditis After COVID-19 Vaccination in Danish Adolescents.

In this prospective nationwide multicenter study from Denmark, myopericarditis after Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA COVID-19 vaccination was identified in 13 males and 2 females between May 15 and September 15, 2021, among 133,477 vaccinated males and 127,857 vaccinated females 12-17 years of age, equaling 97 males and 16 females per million. In conclusion, the incidence of myopericarditis after COVID-19 vaccination among males appears higher than reports from the United States.

Developing and validating COVID-19 adverse outcome risk prediction models from a bi-national European cohort of 5594 patients.

Patients with severe COVID-19 have overwhelmed healthcare systems worldwide. We hypothesized that machine learning (ML) models could be used to predict risks at different stages of management and thereby provide insights into drivers and prognostic markers of disease progression and death. From a cohort of approx. 2.6 million citizens in Denmark, SARS-CoV-2 PCR tests were performed on subjects suspected for COVID-19 disease; 3944 cases had at least one positive test and were subjected to further analysis. SARS-CoV-2 positive cases from the United Kingdom Biobank was used for external validation. The ML models predicted the risk of death (Receiver Operation Characteristics-Area Under the Curve, ROC-AUC) of 0.906 at diagnosis, 0.818, at hospital admission and 0.721 at Intensive Care Unit (ICU) admission. Similar metrics were achieved for predicted risks of hospital and ICU admission and use of mechanical ventilation. Common risk factors, included age, body mass index and hypertension, although the top risk features shifted towards markers of shock and organ dysfunction in ICU patients. The external validation indicated fair predictive performance for mortality prediction, but suboptimal performance for predicting ICU admission. ML may be used to identify drivers of progression to more severe disease and for prognostication patients in patients with COVID-19. We provide access to an online risk calculator based on these findings.