Comorbid medical conditions are a key factor to understand the relationship between psychiatric disorders and COVID-19-related mortality: Results from 49,089 COVID-19 inpatients

• Published in: Molecular psychiatry Vol. 27; no. 3; pp. 1278 - 1280
• Main Authors: Hoertel, Nicolas, Sánchez-Rico, Marina, Herrera-Morueco, Juan José, de la Muela, Pedro, Gulbins, Erich, Kornhuber, Johannes, Carpinteiro, Alexander, Becker, Katrin Anne, Cougoule, Céline, Limosin, Frédéric
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01.03.2022; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 692/699; 692/699/476; Behavioral Sciences; Biological Psychology; Comment; Comorbidity; COVID-19; Humans; Inpatients / psychology; Life Sciences; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Mental disorders; Mental Disorders / epidemiology; Neurosciences; Pharmaceutical sciences; Pharmacotherapy; Psychiatry
• ISSN: 1359-4184; 1476-5578
• DOI: 10.1038/s41380-021-01393-7

Results from the recently published meta-analysis by Vai et al. [1]. indicate that psychiatric disorders may be associated with an increased risk of death after SARS-CoV-2 infection (pooled unadjusted OR = 2.00, 95%CI = 1.58–2.54; 23 studies including 43,938 participants with any psychiatric disorder and 1,425,793 control participants). These findings suggest that psychiatric disorders per se may be risk factors of death in COVID-19. However, a critical limitation for interpreting these findings is that only 9 of 23 studies included in that meta-analysis adjusted for a limited number of comorbid medical conditions. Because comorbid medical illnesses are more prevalent in people with psychiatric disorders than in the general population [2] and are associated with increased risk of COVID-19-related mortality [3, 4], this suggests that the association between psychiatric disorders and increased mortality in patients with COVID-19 may be confounded by medical comorbidities.