The most severely affected in the COVID-19 pandemic: older adults’ risk profiles, medications, long-term consequences and vaccination in large nationwide data

We urgently need research on the most severely affected in the COVID-19 pandemic – older adults. In Sweden, ~90% of the deaths have occurred in people aged >=70-years. Still, few studies on COVID-19 among older adults have based their findings on big data.

To address these major knowledge gaps, we will provide results based on large unselected longitudinal nationwide data.

Among older adults, we aim to 1) Identify risk profiles for severe outcomes of COVID-19; 2) Show outcomes of medication treatment and dementia; 3) Study long-term consequences of COVID-19; and 4) Investigate coverage and outcomes of vaccination.

We will analyse several Swedish registers of people aged >=65-years (n~2.6 million) and the Swedish Dementia Registry (n~95 000), and also include international comparisons. Adjusted regression models (e.g.

Cox proportional hazard, propensity matching, nested case-control design) will be used to estimate independent risk of outcomes (e.g. hospitalisation, mortality, long-term consequences and vaccination) of different factors (e.g. sociodemography, place of residence, nursing home/own home, eldercare, frailty, multimorbidity, polypharmacy, dementia, depression, diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular diseases).

Also medications (e.g. ACE inhibitors, statins and anticoagulants) will be analysed. The findings will contribute to mitigating the effects of this pandemic as well as future ones. Thus, long-term advantages are expected, including for the seasonal influenza.