Abstract

To date, 1841 cases of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) infection have been reported worldwide, with 652 deaths. We used a publically available case line list to explore the effect of relevant factors, notably underlying comorbidities, on fatal outcome of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) cases up to the end of October 2016. A Bayesian Weibull proportional hazards regression model was used to assess the effect of comorbidity, age, epidemic period and sex on the fatality rate of MERS cases and its variation across countries. The crude fatality rate of MERS cases was 32.1% (95% credibility interval (CI): 29.9%, 34.3%). Notably, the incremental change of daily death rate was most prominent during the first week since disease onset with an average increase of 13%, but then stabilized in the remaining two weeks when it only increased 3% on average. Neither sex, nor country of infection were found to have a significant impact on fatality rates after taking into account the age and comorbidity status of patients. After adjusting for age, epidemic period, MERS patients with comorbidity had around 4 times the risk for fatal infection than those without (adjusted hazard ratio of 3.74 (95% CI: 2.57, 5.67)).

Details

Title
Impact of Comorbidity on Fatality Rate of Patients with Middle East Respiratory Syndrome
Author
Ya-Min, Yang 1 ; Chen-Yang, Hsu 1 ; Chao-Chih Lai 2 ; Ming-Fang, Yen 3 ; Wikramaratna, Paul S 4 ; Chen, Hsiu-Hsi 1 ; Wang, Tsung-Hsi 5 

 Division of Biostatistics, College of Public Health, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan 
 Emergency Department, Taipei City Hospital, Ren-Ai Branch, Taipei, Taiwan 
 School of Oral Hygiene, College of Oral Medicine, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan 
 Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom 
 Ministry of Health and Welfare, Taipei, Taiwan; School of Medicine, National Yangming University, Taipei, Taiwan 
Pages
1-9
Publication year
2017
Publication date
Sep 2017
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20452322
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
1954329779
Copyright
© 2017. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.