Young With Intellectual Disability More Likely to Die of COVID-19

WEDNESDAY, June 3, 2020 (HealthDay News) — Age-related differences in COVID-19 trends are seen among those with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), with a higher concentration of cases and increased case fatality in younger individuals with IDD, according to a study published online May 24 in the Disability and Health Journal.

Margaret A. Turk, M.D., from the SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York, and colleagues used data from the TriNetX COVID-19 Research Network platform to identify COVID-19 patients. The authors compared trends in comorbidities, number of cases, number of deaths, and case-fatality rate among people with and without IDD.

The researchers found that the prevalence of specific comorbidities associated with poorer COVID-19 outcomes was higher for people with IDD. Among those with IDD, distinct age-related differences in COVID-19 trends were observed, with a higher concentration of COVID-19 cases at younger ages. The overall case-fatality rate was similar for those with and without IDD (5.1 versus 5.4 percent), but the rates differed by age for those with versus without IDD: ages ≤17 years, 1.6 versus <0.01 percent; ages 18 to 74 years, 4.5 versus 2.7 percent; ages ≥75 years, 21.1 versus 20.7 percent, respectively.

“People with IDD had a comparatively higher case-fatality rate than those without IDD at ages 0 to 17 and 18 to 74, but a similar case-fatality rate at ages 75 and over,” the authors write. “Future work must continue to monitor COVID-19 trends among this and other disability groups with all available data sources, paying particular attention to age related trends when possible.”

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