Impact of COVID-19 national lockdown on asthma exacerbations: interrupted time-series analysis of English primary care data
Comparing pre-lockdown to post-lockdown, this analysis (n=100,165) found a statistically significant reduction in the level of asthma exacerbation rates across all patients (−0.196 episodes per person-year; p<0.001; almost 20 episodes for every 100 patients with asthma per year).
Source:
Thorax
SPS commentary:
The researchers say that while their study cannot definitively prove the reasons for this decrease, they believe that a combination of factors led to a reduction in asthma exacerbations, including changing behaviour due to lockdown measures leading to reduction in air pollution, reduced circulation of respiratory viruses, improved self-management driven by patient concerns during the pandemic and shielding by a subset of patients.