Post-COVID in the most severely affected in the pandemic: older adults’ risk factors, medications and outcomes in large nationwide data

We need post-COVID research on the most severely affected group in the pandemic – older adults.

Focus has so far mainly been on younger individuals, although older adults are likely to be severely affected because of their lower resilience to stressors.

We will therefore provide results based on large unselected longitudinal nationwide data.Among older adults, we aim to 1) Investigate use of healthcare and eldercare among COVID-19 survivors (including creating an indicator of post-COVID in older adults); 2) Identify risk factors for post-COVID; 3) Study outcomes of post-COVID; and 4) Explore the role of medications and dementia in post-COVID.We will analyze several Swedish registers of people aged >=65-years (n~2.6 million) and the Swedish Dementia Registry (n~100 000), and also include international comparisons.

We will study the use of healthcare (e.g. hospitalizations, medications) and eldercare (home care services, nursing home admission) among COVID-19 survivors compared to non-infected. Adjusted regression models (e.g.

Cox proportional hazard, propensity matching) will be used to study outcomes (e.g. mortality) and different risk factors (e.g. sociodemography, multimorbidity, depression and cardiovascular diseases).

Also medications (e.g. polypharmacy, diuretics and anticoagulants) and dementia will be analyzed in detail.The findings will lead to mitigating the long-term effects of the pandemic as well as other infectious diseases like the seasonal influenza.