Is Asthma a Premorbid Condition in Patients with Covid-19?

30 Jun, 21

Introduction

Patients affected with severe coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) often present with fever, dry cough and progressive dyspnea, which are commonly associated with the development of pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). There are scientific reports citing asthma as a potential risk factor for severe COVID-19. However, there is no study that confirms the putative role of asthma as a premorbid condition worsening the disease progression.

Aim

To determine if asthma is a premorbid condition in patients with Covid-19.

Method

Study Design

Systematic review

PubMed-NCBI, Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science databases were extensively searched.
A total of 372 cross-sectional and longitudinal studies that reported on the prevalence of asthma as a comorbid condition of severe Covid—19 since its emergence in December 2019 up to June 30, 2020 were analyzed.
Two authors independently extracted the data using a standardized form.

Results

The clinical characteristics of 1,61,271 patients with Covid-19 were described in the selected 372 articles.
Out of these, 104 articles did not cite any respiratory condition, 201 articles cited respiratory condition other than asthma and 67 articles cited asthma as the underlying disease.
The analysis revealed that only 1.6% (n=2623) had reported asthma as a premorbid condition as compared to the global prevalence of 4.4%

Conclusions

Based on the global prevalence of asthma which is 4.4% and the findings of this systematic review, asthma does not seem to be a potential premorbid condition in Covid-19 patients.
There is a possibility that the clinicians and researchers are not accurately describing the premorbid conditions in patients with Covid-19 and this could worsen the prognosis of Covid-19 patients.

Allergy Asthma Clin Immunol. 2021;17(5). Doi:10.1186/s13223-020-00509-y.