Retrospective Study to Determine the Impact of the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic on Individuals with Chronic Spinal Cord Injury 1 Hong ,
Sungmin Sean Craig Adam Stein Ona Bloom 1Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell; 2The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research; 3 Dept. of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Northwell Health
Background
2,3 Murphy ,
2 Conn ,
Results
According to the National Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) Statistical Center (Univ. of Alabama), there are ~350,000 individuals living with SCI. Approximately 3000 individuals with SCI live in the NY Metropolitan area (New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut), a region that was at the initial US epicenter of the coronavirus 2019 disease (COVID-19). Individuals with SCI are often immunocompromised and have chronic health conditions, such as obesity, hypertension and diabetes, which have been identified in the general population as risk factors for poor outcomes with COVID-19 (Richardson et al 2020). People with SCI often suffer from recurrent infections, such as urinary tract infections (UTIs)., People with higher spinal cord lesions (tetraplegia) may have compromised respiratory muscle function, preventing them from clearing lung secretions and have lower core body temperature, thus they may not have high fevers characteristic of COVID-19 in the general population. COVID-19 may therefore present differently in people with SCI. There is a need to better understand how COVID-19 affects SCI patients, including the types and severity of symptoms, hospitalization rates, responses to treatments, and responses to vaccines.
Results
People with chronic SCI who contracted COVID-19 were mostly PCR+, symptomatic, but not hospitalized, consistent with a mild or moderate course of disease. The most common symptom was fever. In the future, a prospective studies will explore vaccine responses in people with SCI, as well as indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on people with SCI (e.g. access to services, telehealth utilization, psychosocial health, access to home healthcare).
This retrospective chart review study was conducted to test the hypothesis that individuals with SCI will have a higher prevalence of COVID-19 diagnosis than the uninjured population. Here we examined if COVID-19 patients with SCI: (1) have a different onset, type, number, or severity of symptoms than the uninjured population; (2) have a higher percent of severe symptoms and faster time to mortality than the uninjured population.
Retrospective medical chart data was gathered from medical records and from physician reports of individuals with SCI who receive medical treatment at Northwell Health during the study period (1/1/20-10/1/21). Descriptive statistics were performed.
1,2,3 PhD
Conclusions and Future Directions
Hypothesis
Methods
1,3 MD ,
Resources Figure 7: Independent CRISPR knockout of CDK4 or CDK6 does not cause dropout in most breast cancer cell lines studied.
1. Bauman, WA et al. (2012). 31st G. Heiner Sell Lectureship: Secondary Medical Consequences of Spinal Cord Injury. Topics in Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation. 18(4), 354-378. 2. Galea, MD et al. (2021). COVID-19 in spinal cord injury patients at a veterans administration hospital: A case series. The Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine. Jan 19:1-13. doi: 10.1080/10790268.2020.1871254. 3. Hoogenes, B et al. (2021). COVID-19 and Spinal Cord Injury: Clinical Presentation, Clinical Course, and Clinical Outcomes: A Rapid Systematic Review. Journal of Neurotrauma. 38(9), 1242-1250.