Does death from Covid-19 arise from a multi-step process?
Eur J Epidemiol
; 36(1): 1-9, 2021 Jan.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1033448
ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 death rate increases exponentially with age, and the main risk factors are having underlying conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, severe chronic respiratory disease and cancer. These characteristics are consistent with the multi-step model of disease. We applied this model to Covid-19 case fatality rates (CFRs) from China, South Korea, Italy, Spain and Japan. In all countries we found that a plot of log(CFR) against log(age) was approximately linear with a slope of about 5. We also conducted similar analyses for selected other respiratory diseases. SARS showed a similar log-log age-pattern to that of Covid-19, albeit with a lower slope, whereas seasonal and pandemic influenza showed quite different age-patterns. Thus, death from Covid-19 and SARS appears to follow a distinct age-pattern, consistent with a multi-step model of disease that in the case of Covid-19 is probably defined by comorbidities and age producing immune-related susceptibility.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Mortality
/
Age Factors
/
SARS-CoV-2
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
Asia
/
Europa
Language:
English
Journal:
Eur J Epidemiol
Journal subject:
Epidemiology
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
S10654-020-00711-7
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