ArticleBMJ military health2025
Impact of COVID-19 on the veteran population: evidence from the Trends in Scottish Veterans Health study.
Article in BMJ military health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Natural disasters and SARS-CoV-2: potential risk factors for exacerbating mental health conditions among veterans.Discover mental health · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionThere have been few epidemiological studies on the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic on the veteran population, other than on specific aspects such as mental health, and none in the UK. We used data from the Trends in Scottish Veterans Health cohort to explore the risk of hospitalisation and death associated with COVID-19 in veterans resident in Scotland in comparison with matched non-veterans.
methodsRetrospective cohort study of 71 000 veterans and a comparison group of 230 000 non-veterans matched for age, sex and geography, using Cox proportional hazard analysis to explore the risk of hospitalisation with COVID-19 and COVID-19-associated death overall and by birth cohort, sex and length of military service.
resultsBetween 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2021, 564 (0.79%) veterans had been hospitalised with COVID-19 compared with 1728 (0.75%) non-veterans. The Cox model showed no significant difference overall, HR 0.99, 95% CIs 0.90 to 1.11, p=0.800. Subgroup analysis showed increased risk in older, short-serving (<20 weeks) Early Service Leavers (ESL). There was no overall difference in COVID-19-associated deaths, HR 0.99, 95% CI 0.79 to 1.23, p=0.993, but subgroup analysis showed a non-significant reduced risk of death in veterans aged 61-70 years, and a 38% higher risk in veterans aged over 70 years which almost reached statistical significance, p=0.054. This was only partially explained by socioeconomic factors and common comorbidities, although we had no data on domestic circumstances or care home residence.
conclusionsOverall, military service was not a risk factor for either hospitalisation or death associated with COVID-19. Older ESLs were at increased risk compared with non-veterans, but military service is unlikely to have been causal. The risk of death was increased in the oldest veterans and further studies are needed to explain this once census data become available for linkage.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.