Men with dementia are at increased risk of all-cause mortality following SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination
Jongmok Ha1, Suyeon Park2, Hyunwook Kang1, Taeeun Kyung1, Namoh Kim1, Dong Kyu Kim1, HYEONJOON KIM1, Kihoon Bae1, Min Cheol Song1, Kwang June Lee1, Euiho Lee1, Beom Seuk Hwang3, Kunhee Park1, Jin Myoung Seok4, Jinyoung Youn5
1Infectious Disease Control Center, Gyeonggi Provincial Government, Suwon, Korea, 2Biostatistics and Applied Statistics, Soonchunhyang University Seoul Hospital, and Chung-Ang University, 3Applied Statistics, Chung-Ang University, 4Neurology, Soonchunhyang University Hospital Cheonan, Soonchunhyang University College of Medicine, 5Neurology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine
Objective:
This study aimed to figure out the risk factors of all-cause mortality post SARS-CoV-2 vaccination.
Background:
Amassing reports of death with close temporal association to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination warrants further investigation, especially after a nationwide mass vaccination campaign. With the release of uncontrolled data, vaccine fear and hesitancy fueled by the media prevents effective future implementation of vaccine rollout. As little information is known on this topic, we performed a prospective surveillance study on the risk factors of all-cause mortality post SARS-CoV-2 vaccination.
Design/Methods:
Of 38,828,692 SARS-CoV-2 vaccine doses administered from February 2021 to March 2022 in the Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, a total of 687 cases of severe serious events and 353 cases of deaths were reported post SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. We compared the demographic characteristics between patients who were deceased, and patients who were reported to have suffered severe serious events but survived. Additionally, survival analysis was performed to assess the contributing risk for post-vaccination mortality.
Results:
Patients who died following SARS-CoV-2 vaccination were older, hospitalized, vaccinated in nursing facilities, received 3rd dose of vaccine, and had ischemic heart disease or dementia as comorbidity. In multivariate analysis, only male sex (crude IRR, 1.413; 95% CI, 1.026–1.947). and dementia (crude IRR, 1.644; 95% CI, 1.091–2.478) was associated with increased risk of death following vaccination, whereas hospitalization (crude IRR, 0.103; 95% CI, 0.076–0.139) was still significantly associated with decreased risk of mortality.
Conclusions:
Men with dementia may be at increased risk of death following SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. If severe serious adverse event is suspected, prompt hospitalization may help reduce mortality. Government authorities should pay closer attention to these groups of patients to ensure safety following mass vaccination campaign.