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BEHANDLING-God og treffsikker diagnostikk, behandling og rehabilitering

EU-COVID-19 - a multinational registry-based linkage study with focus on risk and protective factors, clinical outcomes and mental health.

Alternative title: EU-COVID-19

Awarded: NOK 4.8 mill.

EU-COVID-19 - a multinational registry-based linkage study with focus on risk and protective factors, clinical outcomes and mental health The aim of this international interdisciplinary project is to provide knowledge about the populations' risk factors and health consequences of COVID-19. An additional aim is to provide information about how treatment with medications may modify the course and severity of COVID-19 disease. We will specifically study vulnerable patient groups (e.g. children, pregnant women, and patients with co-morbidities like cancer) and assess mental health outcomes. To do so, we will link several health care registries covering several million individuals in multiple countries including Norway, Italy and Denmark. The project started on 1 July 2020 and ended on 30 June 2023.

We have generated new epidemiological knowledge on COVID-19, with special relevance for patient groups such pregnant women, trends in medication use during the pandemic, and impact of the pandemic on population’s mental health at large. We have established the following: Modeling of drug utilization using the pandemic dates as breaking time point can be visualized using a online ShinyApp. The medications most commonly used to treat patients (e.g. pregnant women) with COVID-19 are antibiotics, anti-thrombotic agents, hydroxychloroquine, and steroids. There is substantial variation in the medication used to treat patients with COVID-19 across different countries and health care settings, e.g., the use of hydroxychloroquine. Pregnant women are unlikely to receive medication unless they had severe COVID-19 illness. This was more pronounced during the first ten months of the pandemic. Long term: Importantly, we have set up multinational protocols, expanded on Common Data Models needed for COVID-19 research and a data analytical pipeline fitted to Norwegian health data to do so. By doing so, the project will continue to contribute to the global response to the current COVID-19 outbreak beyond this project.

Background and aim: The background for this multinational project is the urgent knowledge gaps on epidemiological factors and consequences of COVID-19 in the general population and vulnerable groups. Moreover, understanding whether available pharmacotherapy options may modify the course and severity of COVID-19 infection, and the impact of the COVID-19 threat on mental health, is an impelling clinical question. The proposed project aims to fill these gaps by generating timely, methodologically sound evidence stemming from high-quality, detailed, and already available population-based data covering a population of over 30 million inhabitants. Methods and material: The project capitalizes on our access to high quality registry data in four countries, Norway, Italy, Denmark and UK, representing individual level patient data across countries with different incidences of COVID-19, and covering different types of health care systems. Design: Register-linkage cohort study with cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis to examine time trends (2018 – 2020). Results will be incorporated in an innovative online risk predicting tool that can be used to predict individual-specific risk for severe COVID-19 infection and prognosis, which is applicable in clinical setting. The research team is highly interdisciplinary, with expertise spanning from the field of epidemiology to pharmacology, biostatistics (incl. machine learning techniques for risk prediction), paediatrics, infectious diseases, signal detection and regulatory pharmacovigilance. The project is a two-year project starting 1. July 2020 and ending 30. June 2022.

Funding scheme:

BEHANDLING-God og treffsikker diagnostikk, behandling og rehabilitering