The risk of COVID-19 infection in patients with atopic dermatitis: A retrospective cohort study

The dermatology community remains concerned about the risk of COVID-19 in individuals with atopic dermatitis (AD). Using Symphony Health-derived data from the COVID-19 Research Database,1 we aimed to assess the risk of contracting COVID-19 in adults with AD while controlling for demographic factors and comorbidities known or speculated to be COVID-19 risk factors and assess the risk of contracting COVID-19 in adults with AD treated with dupilumab.Subjects aged ≥20 years were eligible for inclusion. All subjects with at least 2 diagnoses of AD prior to January 1, 2020, were included in the AD cohort. Subjects with no record of AD diagnosis prior to January 1, 2020, were randomly placed in the control group in a 10:1 size ratio compared with the AD group. Individuals without known ethnicity or race, type of payment, and/or sex were then excluded. Laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19 between January 1, 2020, and April 17, 2021, were identified (Supplemental Fig I available via Mendeley at https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/j95wfcyy3j/1). A description of the methodology for this retrospective study is provided in Supplemental Methods (available via Mendeley at https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/t26gnt3pss/1), Supplemental Table I (available via Mendely at https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/ww6b5n327m/1), and Supplemental Table II (available via Mendeley at https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/tbh86d3z8r/1).The AD and non-AD cohorts included 39,417 and 397,293 subjects, respectively (Table I). Poisson regression revealed a crude COVID-19 incidence rate ratio (IRR) of 1.41 (95% CI 1.34-1.48) for adults with AD compared with adults without AD (Table II). After adjusting for demographic factors and baseline comorbidities, the IRR remained statistically significant but was reduced to 1.18 (95% CI 1.12-1.24).

Source: https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(21)02578-0/fulltext