2020/09/18
Keio University School of Medicine
A research group (K-CORC), consisting of the Keio University School of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary Medicine (Professor Koichi Fukunaga, Associate Professor Makoto Ishii) and Keio University-affiliated hospitals, examined the basic information, symptoms at admission, and comorbidities of all 345 patients admitted to 14 hospitals within the group by mid-June 2020. The group also analyzed risk factors for severe illness requiring oxygen inhalation and risk factors leading to death.
There were 112 patients (32.5%) who developed severe illness requiring oxygen inhalation, and 23 patients (6.7%) died.
The risk factors for severe illness requiring oxygen inhalation, in descending order of significance, included comorbidities of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), disturbance of consciousness as a symptom during hospitalization, shortness of breath, general malaise, comorbidities of hypertension, and old age. Furthermore, the study showed that in addition to previously reported risk factors for death such as old age and chronic kidney disease, hyperuricemia/gout was newly identified as a contributing factor.
Previously, reports from Japan on a significant number of COVID-19 cases were limited to a few reports of around 100 cases related to passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship and a report of 151 cases from six medical institutions in Kanagawa Prefecture. This report is the first in Japan to conduct a large-scale case study of over 300 community-acquired infections not related to cruise ships, presenting the risk factors for severe illness and death in an English-language paper. Since each facility registered all patients admitted for COVID-19, this is considered a significant study that reflects the real-world infection situation in the Tokyo metropolitan area during the first wave of the COVID-19 epidemic in Japan.
The results of this research were published in the online edition of the international scientific journal "Journal of Infection" on September 10, 2020 (US Eastern Time).
For the full press release, please see below.