Pre-pandemic cognitive function and COVID-19 mortality: prospective cohort study
Pre-pandemic cognitive function and COVID-19 mortality: prospective cohort study
Poorer performance on standard tests of pre-morbid cognitive function is related to an elevated risk of death from lower respiratory tract infections but the link with coronavirus (COVID‑19) mortality is untested. Participants in UK Biobank, aged 40 to 69 years at study induction (2006–10), were administered a reaction time test, an indicator of information processing speed, and also had their verbal-numeric reasoning assessed. Between April 1st and September 23rd 2020 there were 388 registry-confirmed deaths (138 women) ascribed to COVID-19 in 494,932 individuals (269,602 women) with a reaction time test result, and 125 such deaths (38 women) in the subgroup of 180,198 people (97,794 women) with data on verbal-numeric reasoning. In analyses adjusted for age, sex, and ethnicity, a one standard deviation slower reaction time was related to a higher rate of death from COVID-19 (hazard ratio; 95% confidence interval: 1.18; 1.09, 1.28), as was a one standard deviation disadvantage on the verbal-numeric reasoning test (1.32; 1.09, 1.59). While there was some attenuation in these relationships after adjustment for additional covariates which included socio-economic status and lifestyle factors, the two pre-pandemic indicators of cognitive function continued to be related to COVID-19 mortality.
COVID-19, Cognitive function, Cohort
559-564
Batty, G.David
4f7123a8-497f-44c4-8a6c-a42462e2102d
Deary, I.J.
e3403cfe-eb5b-4941-903d-87ef0db89c60
Gale, Catharine R.
5bb2abb3-7b53-42d6-8aa7-817e193140c8
May 2021
Batty, G.David
4f7123a8-497f-44c4-8a6c-a42462e2102d
Deary, I.J.
e3403cfe-eb5b-4941-903d-87ef0db89c60
Gale, Catharine R.
5bb2abb3-7b53-42d6-8aa7-817e193140c8
Batty, G.David, Deary, I.J. and Gale, Catharine R.
(2021)
Pre-pandemic cognitive function and COVID-19 mortality: prospective cohort study.
European Journal of Epidemiology, 36 (5), .
(doi:10.1007/s10654-021-00743-7).
Abstract
Poorer performance on standard tests of pre-morbid cognitive function is related to an elevated risk of death from lower respiratory tract infections but the link with coronavirus (COVID‑19) mortality is untested. Participants in UK Biobank, aged 40 to 69 years at study induction (2006–10), were administered a reaction time test, an indicator of information processing speed, and also had their verbal-numeric reasoning assessed. Between April 1st and September 23rd 2020 there were 388 registry-confirmed deaths (138 women) ascribed to COVID-19 in 494,932 individuals (269,602 women) with a reaction time test result, and 125 such deaths (38 women) in the subgroup of 180,198 people (97,794 women) with data on verbal-numeric reasoning. In analyses adjusted for age, sex, and ethnicity, a one standard deviation slower reaction time was related to a higher rate of death from COVID-19 (hazard ratio; 95% confidence interval: 1.18; 1.09, 1.28), as was a one standard deviation disadvantage on the verbal-numeric reasoning test (1.32; 1.09, 1.59). While there was some attenuation in these relationships after adjustment for additional covariates which included socio-economic status and lifestyle factors, the two pre-pandemic indicators of cognitive function continued to be related to COVID-19 mortality.
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Accepted/In Press date: 25 March 2021
Published date: May 2021
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
GDB is supported by the UK Medical Research Council (MR/P023444/1) and the US National Institute on Aging (1R56AG052519-01; 1R01AG052519-01A1); and IJD by the UK Medical Research Council (MR/R024065/1), UK Economic and Social Research Council (ES/S015604/1), and US National Institute on Aging, US (1R01AG054628-01A1). These funders, who provided no direct financial or material support for the work, had no role in study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, or report preparation. Access to data: Data from UK Biobank ( http://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/ ) are available to bona fide researchers upon application. Part of this research has been conducted using the UK Biobank Resource under Application 10279.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s).
Keywords:
COVID-19, Cognitive function, Cohort
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 451078
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/451078
ISSN: 0393-2990
PURE UUID: 89c0f92c-f8ae-4e62-bbc8-1065618549a9
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Date deposited: 07 Sep 2021 16:31
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 02:42
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Author:
G.David Batty
Author:
I.J. Deary
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