ArticleInternational journal of epidemiology2020
Risk factors for positive and negative COVID-19 tests: a cautious and in-depth analysis of UK biobank data.
Article in International journal of epidemiology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 81 papers, 6 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
81 citing papers in PubMed, 6 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 151 citations in OpenAlex.
- Individual risk factors associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection during Alpha variant in high-income countries: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in public health · 2024Pooled it
- Particulate matter air pollution and COVID-19 infection, severity, and mortality: A systematic review and meta-analysis.The Science of the total environment · 2023Pooled it
- Risk factors for SARS-CoV-2 infection during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic literature review.Frontiers in public health · 2023Pooled it
- Risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection in migrants and ethnic minorities compared with the general population in the European WHO region during the first year of the pandemic: a systematic review.BMC public health · 2022Pooled it
- Effectiveness of public health measures in reducing the incidence of covid-19, SARS-CoV-2 transmission, and covid-19 mortality: systematic review and meta-analysis.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2021Pooled it
- A meta-analysis of the association between obesity and COVID-19.Epidemiology and infection · 2020Pooled it
- The effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines and the added benefit of booster doses in Hessen, Germany, during the COVID-19 pandemic: Results from a vaccinated-only study.Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics · 2026Article
- Mortality of American Indian and Alaska Native workers by occupation and industry, 2020-2022.Journal of safety research · 2025Article
- Article
- SARS-CoV-2 Antibody Prevalence Across Unvaccinated Health Care Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Yemen: Cross-Sectional Study.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2025Article
- Association of vaccination status and immunosuppression with mortality of SARS-CoV-2 infection in patients with fibrotic interstitial lung disease.BMJ open respiratory research · 2025Article
- A syndemic approach to the study of Covid-19-related death: a cohort study using UK Biobank data.Journal of public health (Oxford, England) · 2025Article
- A cross-sectional study of COVID-19 testing and disclosure hesitancy: The role of responsibility attribution in South Korea.PloS one · 2025Article
- Social inequalities in SARS-CoV-2 infection in high income countries: highlighting the need for an intersectional perspective in quantitative research.Frontiers in public health · 2025Review
- Lifestyle, air pollution, and risk of multimorbidity in a prospective analysis of the UK Biobank cohort.Heliyon · 2024Article
- Prospective study design and data analysis in UK Biobank.Science translational medicine · 2024Review
- Sociodemographic inequalities in the incidence of COVID-19 in National Household Sample Survey cohort, Brazil, 2020.Revista brasileira de epidemiologia = Brazilian journal of epidemiology · 2024Article
- Disparities in Coronavirus Disease 2019 Clinical Outcomes and Vaccination Coverage Among Migrants With Human Immunodeficiency Virus in the PISCIS Cohort: A Population-Based Propensity Score-Matched Analysis.Open forum infectious diseases · 2024Article
- A joint penalized spline smoothing model for the number of positive and negative COVID-19 tests.PloS one · 2024Article
- Decoding the exposome: data science methodologies and implications in exposome-wide association studies (ExWASs).Exposome · 2024Article
21 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 5 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThe recent COVID-19 outbreak has generated an unprecedented public health crisis, with millions of infections and hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide. Using hospital-based or mortality data, several COVID-19 risk factors have been identified, but these may be confounded or biased.
methodsUsing SARS-CoV-2 infection test data (n = 4509 tests; 1325 positive) from Public Health England, linked to the UK Biobank study, we explored the contribution of demographic, social, health risk, medical and environmental factors to COVID-19 risk. We used multivariable and penalized logistic regression models for the risk of (i) being tested, (ii) testing positive/negative in the study population and, adopting a test negative design, (iii) the risk of testing positive within the tested population.
resultsIn the fully adjusted model, variables independently associated with the risk of being tested for COVID-19 with odds ratio >1.05 were: male sex; Black ethnicity; social disadvantage (as measured by education, housing and income); occupation (healthcare worker, retired, unemployed); ever smoker; severely obese; comorbidities; and greater exposure to particulate matter (PM) 2.5 absorbance. Of these, only male sex, non-White ethnicity and lower educational attainment, and none of the comorbidities or health risk factors, were associated with testing positive among tested individuals.
conclusionsWe adopted a careful and exhaustive approach within a large population-based cohort, which enabled us to triangulate evidence linking male sex, lower educational attainment and non-White ethnicity with the risk of COVID-19. The elucidation of the joint and independent effects of these factors is a high-priority area for further research to inform on the natural history of COVID-19.
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Registered trials
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