Safe People
Lead applicant organisation name	University of Birmingham

Safe Projects
Project title	PhenoAge as a predictor of outcome in acute admissions with Covid-19
Lay summary	"Covid-19 has had an unprecedented effect on life over the last 3 years and continues to be both an important cause of death and have negative health impacts. Over 5% of deaths in the week ending 21st January 2023 involved Covid-19. This continues to impact individuals and the health services' ability to deliver good care. Research has identified factors leading to bad outcomes for patients such as death, admission to Intensive Care, and long hospital stays. These include patient factors like increasing age and disease factors such as blood tests. Other researchers have grouped these factors to predict patients likely to do badly when admitted with Covid-19 – a risk model. However, none of the available risk models have been universally adopted. PhenoAgeAccel is a different type of risk model. It is a marker of ‘biological age’ or how old a person appears to be independent of their chronological age. David Attenborough is an example of someone whose biological age would be less than their chronological age. PhenoAgeAccel has been tested in various populations and consistently predicts bad outcomes. It predicted the severity of outcomes in UK biobank participants diagnosed with Covid-19 more than 10 years later. It is simple to calculate from inpatients with Covid-19 and could become an automatically calculated risk model on admission, helping doctors identify patients most likely to have bad outcomes."
Public benefit statement	"Covid-19 remains a common hospital admission diagnosis and a significant cause of death. There is no universal prognostication tool to aid patient management and communication with families. This project aims to improve prognostication tools by using PhenoAgeAccel as a measure of healthspan in the acute setting. If UHB data confirms its predictive value in Covid-19 inpatients, researchers will use Phosp-Covid data to explore links with functional outcomes like frailty or sarcopenia. If PATHWAY data also supports its predictive value, PhenoAgeAccel could be tested in other patient populations for validation. The researchers anticipate developing a prognostication tool that can be automatically embedded into admission results. This could help clinicians manage patients and communicate prognoses, improve Covid-19 treatment strategies by considering biological ageing, and predict length of stay to optimize ward management. Future trials could also use accelerated ageing as an indicator for treatment rather than disease severity."
Latest approval date	21/02/2024

Safe Data
Dataset(s) name	PATHWAY Research Data Hub: PWY008 dataset

Safe Setting
Access type	Data Licence Agreement between the collaborating organisations using secure and controlled data analysis environments.

Safe Outputs
Link	Not yet Published