Case fatality rates (CFR) of the novel 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have been reported ranging between 0% to 40% among Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients. However, because of small sample sizes and the lack of large matched comparison groups, previous studies have not clarified whether PD is an independent risk factor for death. 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