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. 2021 Jan 6;17(1):5.
doi: 10.1186/s13223-020-00509-y.

Asthma and COVID-19: a systematic review

Natália F Mendes  1   2 , Carlos P Jara  1   2 , Eli Mansour  3 , Eliana P Araújo  1   2 , Licio A Velloso  4   5
Affiliations

Asthma and COVID-19: a systematic review

Natália F Mendes et al. Allergy Asthma Clin Immunol. .

Abstract

Background: Severe coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) presents with progressive dyspnea, which results from acute lung inflammatory edema leading to hypoxia. As with other infectious diseases that affect the respiratory tract, asthma has been cited as a potential risk factor for severe COVID-19. However, conflicting results have been published over the last few months and the putative association between these two diseases is still unproven.

Methods: Here, we systematically reviewed all reports on COVID-19 published since its emergence in December 2019 to June 30, 2020, looking into the description of asthma as a premorbid condition, which could indicate its potential involvement in disease progression.

Results: We found 372 articles describing the underlying diseases of 161,271 patients diagnosed with COVID-19. Asthma was reported as a premorbid condition in only 2623 patients accounting for 1.6% of all patients.

Conclusions: As the global prevalence of asthma is 4.4%, we conclude that either asthma is not a premorbid condition that contributes to the development of COVID-19 or clinicians and researchers are not accurately describing the premorbidities in COVID-19 patients.

Keywords: Allergy; Coronavirus; Lung; Respiratory insufficiency; SARS-CoV-2.

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Conflict of interest statement

Authors have no competing interests to declare.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Schematic representation of search, exclusions and inclusions of articles
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Graphic representation of the geographical origin of the studies analyzed in the systematic review (a) and the proportion of patients with previous diagnosis of asthma among COVID-19 patients included in studies citing asthma (b) and among all COVID-19 patients described up to June 30, 2020 (c)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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