Population Studies Confirm Risk Factors for Catching Covid-19
But the UK Biobank study on vitamin D and ethnicity need to be interpreted with caution.
Risk Factors for Contracting Covid-19
A new study titled “Vitamin D concentrations and COVID-19 infection in UK Biobank” is just published in Diabetes & Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research & Reviews this May. Researchers at the University of Glasgow obtained baseline demographics data from the UK Biobank study conducted between 2006 and 2010. They match this data with Covid-19 test outcomes provided by the Public Health England.
While the UK Biobank study recruited 502,624 people, only 1474 had undergone Covid-19 testing, of which 449 people were tested positive. Factors that independently predict Covid-19 positive test — after adjusting for covariates such as socioeconomic and lifestyle factors — are illustrated below.
The UK Biobank study corroborates another recent population-level study published in Lancet Infectious Disease, titled “Risk factors for SARS-CoV-2 among patients in the Oxford Royal College of General Practitioners Research and Surveillance Centre primary care network: a cross-sectional study.”
