COVID-19 Research Paper Volume 14, Issue 4 pp 1611—1626
Physiological health indexes predict deterioration and mortality in patients with COVID-19: a comparative study
- 1 Russian Clinical Research Center for Gerontology, Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University of the Ministry of Healthcare of the Russian Federation, Moscow 129226, Russian Federation
- 2 Federal State Autonomous Educational Institution of Higher Education “Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia” (RUDN University), Department of Internal Medicine, Moscow 117198, Russian Federation
- 3 PRIMUS Research Group, Department of Family Medicine, University of Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Quebec J1H 5N4, Canada
- 4 Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation (Sechenov University), Moscow 119991, Russian Federation
- 5 Research Center on Aging, Sherbrooke, Quebec J1H 4C4, Canada
- 6 Research Center of Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Quebec J1H 5N4, Canada
- 7 Institute of Biology, Komi Science Center of Russian Academy of Sciences, Syktyvkar 167000, Russian Federation
- 8 The Loginov Moscow Clinical Scientific Center of Moscow Health Department, Moscow 111123, Russian Federation
Received: November 4, 2021 Accepted: February 11, 2022 Published: February 25, 2022
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.203915How to Cite
Copyright: © 2022 Strazhesko et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Old age is a crucial risk factor for severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), with serious or fatal outcomes disproportionately affecting older adults compared with the rest of the population. We proposed that the physiological health status and biological age, beyond the chronological age itself, could be the driving trends affecting COVID-19 severity and mortality. A total of 155 participants hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19 aged 26–94 years were recruited for the study. Four different physiological summary indices were calculated: Klemera and Doubal’s biological age, PhenoAge, physiological dysregulation (PD; globally and in specific systems), and integrated albunemia. All of these indices significantly predicted the risk of death (p < 0.01) after adjusting for chronological age and sex. In all models, men were 2.4–4.4-times more likely to die than women. The global PD was shown to be a good predictor of deterioration, with the odds of deterioration increasing by 41.7% per 0.5-unit increase in the global PD. As for death, the odds also increased by 68.3% per 0.5-unit increase in the global PD. Our results are partly attributed to common chronic diseases that aggravate COVID-19, but they also suggest that the underlying physiological state could capture vulnerability to severe COVID-19 and serve as a tool for prognosis that would, in turn, help inpatient management.