Cross-sectional case-control studies (Blue)
In this paper recently published in the European Journal of Neurology, the authors aimed to determine the frequency and distribution of currently known risk factors for COVID‐19 mortality in a population of people living with multiple sclerosis (MS). MS patients with at least one complete case report between January 1st 2015 and December 31st 2019 from the Innsbruck MS database (IMSD) were included in this cross‐sectional study. Frequencies of currently estimated COVID‐19 mortality risk factors were analysed and the cumulative risk was calculated using a recently developed score. For every risk group, the proportion of patients receiving disease-modifying therapy (DMT) and immunosuppressive treatment was determined. Of 1931 MS patients, 63.4% were estimated to have low risk of COVID‐19 mortality, 26% mild risk, 8.8% moderate risk, while a combined 0.9% had high or very high risk of COVID‐19 mortality. Of the patients at high or very high risk, only one patient was receiving DMT and none received immunosuppressive therapy. In a population‐based MS cohort, the proportion of patients at high risk of COVID‐19 mortality was estimated to be below 1%. Importantly, the majority of these MS patients were not receiving any DMT.
DOI: 10.1111/ene.14555
