Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases Predict Different COVID-19 Outcomes: A UK Biobank Study

Abstract

In December 2019, a coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began infecting humans, causing a novel disease, coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19). This was first described in the Wuhan province of the People’s Republic of China. SARS-CoV-2 has spread throughout the world, causing a global pandemic. To date, thousands of cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the United Kingdom, and over 45,000 patients have died. Some progress has been achieved in managing this disease, but the biological determinants of health, in addition to age, that affect SARS-CoV-2 infectivity and mortality are under scrutiny. Recent studies show that several medical conditions, including diabetes and hypertension, increase the risk of COVID-19 and death. The increased vulnerability of elderly individuals and those with comorbidities, together with the prevalence of neurodegenerative diseases with advanced age, led us to investigate the links between neurodegeneration and COVID-19. We analysed the primary health records of 13,338 UK individuals tested for COVID-19 between March and July 2020. We show that a pre-existing diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease predicts the highest risk of COVID-19 and mortality among elderly individuals. In contrast, Parkinson’s disease patients were found to have a higher risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection but not mortality from COVID-19. We conclude that there are disease-specific differences in COVID-19 susceptibility among patients affected by neurodegenerative disorders.

Preexisting Mental Disorders Increase the Risk of COVID-19 Infection and Associated Mortality

“…In particular, subjects with Alzheimer disease had the highest risks of COVID-19 infection and associated mortality among all dementia subtypes. This finding was confirmed by a previous study ( 17 ). There are a few possible explanations for this finding.…”

Paracetamol Is Associated with a Lower Risk of COVID-19 Infection and Decreased ACE2 Protein Expression: A Retrospective Analysis

“…For the UK Biobank analysis (Figure 1), we first employed an exploratory approach to identify which putative comorbidities influence the risk of testing positive for SARS-CoV-2. We obtained a list of 18 variables (Table S1) based on 3 publications that explored risk factors influencing SARS-CoV-2 infection [28][29][30]. We then applied an iterative variable selection procedure combining unsupervised stepwise forward and stepwise backward regression analyses to select the most suitable predictor or combination of predictors in our models based on the Akaike information criterion.…”

Can Control Infections Slow Down the Progression of Alzheimer’s Disease? Talking About the Role of Infections in Alzheimer’s Disease

“…However, the exact impact of COVID-19 infection on AD is still uncertain due to lack of long-term followup and research. According to the published data, the preliminary conclusions concerning the effects of COVID-19 virus infections on AD are inconsistent (Brown et al, 2020;Fotuhi et al, 2020;Li et al, 2020;Naughton et al, 2020;Yu et al, 2020). Whether COVID-19 increases the risk and the incidence rate of future dementia is still to be further studied.…”

“…In addition, a study that tested 13,338 cases for COVID-19 in United Kingdom showed that the patients with AD had highest risk of COVID-19 infection and mortality than normal elderly. However, the patients with PD enhanced risk of COVID-19 infection, but not mortality from COVID-19, suggesting that there was different susceptibility to COVID-19 in patients with neurodegenerative disorders (Yu et al, 2020). Patients carrying APOEε4 infected with COVID-19 had obvious odor recognition deficits when compared with those not carrying APOEε4, speculating that COVID-19 infection may increase the risk of dementia in APOEε4 carriers in the future (Ferini-Strambi and Salsone, 2020).…”