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Using Effect Modification Analysis of Inflammatory Markers to Understand Potential COVID-19--Related Prognosis from Nationally Representative Data (304205)

Keywords: Epidemiologic methods, Mortality, COVID-19, Health survey, Nationally representative

Individuals with comorbidities have been shown to have poorer prognosis from the COVID-19 pandemic than those individuals without comorbidities like obesity. Linking national survey data with administrative data sources enables researchers to precisely determine how inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein can be used . Recently the Data Linkage Program at the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) released updated linked mortality files through 2015, for the 1999-2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data linked to the National Death Index mortality files. We investigated the effect modification of C-reactive protein on the effect of obesity on mortality status using NHANES data to inform COVID-19 related policy. Effect modification was compared to another key epidemiological tool, interaction analysis. In order to demonstrate the comparability, relative hazard ratios for all-cause and cause-specific mortality, using Cox proportional hazards models, was used.