The goal of this study, recently published in Movement Disorders Journal, was to determine whether PD patients had a higher COVID-19 CFR. The authors compared COVID-19 CFR in PD patients with a large, demographically matched population via the TriNetX COVID-19 research network, a health research database with deidentified medical records of over 50 million patients mostly from the USA. As of July 15, 2020, this database listed 79,049 adult COVID-19 patients, 694 of whom had PD. On September 9, 2020, the authors extracted mortality data for this cohort. Among 78,355 COVID-19 patients without PD, 4,290 died compared to 148 of the 694 patients with PD (5.5% Non-PD vs. 21.3% PD, p<0.001, χ2 test). Accounting for group differences, the author found that COVID-19-related CFR was increased in PD patients, independent of age, sex, and race.
DOI: 10.1002/mds.28325