Krishnan Bhaskaran

TL;DR: A range of clinical factors associated with COVID-19-related death is quantified in one of the largest cohort studies on this topic so far and includes people of white ethnicity, Black and South Asian people were at higher risk, even after adjustment for other factors.

TL;DR: The CPRD primary care database is a rich source of health data for research, including data on demographics, symptoms, tests, diagnoses, therapies, health-related behaviours and referrals to secondary care, but researchers must be aware of the complexity of routinely collected electronic health records.

TL;DR: BMI is associated with cancer risk, with substantial population-level effects, and the heterogeneity in the effects suggests that different mechanisms are associated with different cancer sites and different patient subgroups.

TL;DR: The analysis process is outlined, beginning with descriptive analysis, then focusing on issues in time series regression that differ from other regression methods: modelling short-term fluctuations in the presence of seasonal and long-term patterns, dealing with time varying confounding factors and modelling delayed (‘lagged’) associations between exposure and outcome.

TL;DR: People from Asian and black groups are at markedly increased risk of in-hospital death from COVID-19, and contrary to some prior speculation this is only partially attributable to pre-existing clinical risk factors or deprivation; further research into the drivers of this association is therefore urgently required.