Prevalence of infections like asthma, COPD and pneumonia fell in 2023 compared to 2019, suggesting that there was no increased susceptibility in catching these infections post-pandemic, according to new findings published July 16 in Epic Research.
Data from 256 million patient records from 1,500 hospitals and more than 34,100 clinics in all 50 states revealed that respiratory diseases actually went down significantly.
Since 2019, diagnostic rates fell for the following infections in patients between 18–50:
- Asthma fell from 7.84% to 7%
- COPD fell from 0.44% to 0.32%
- Pneumonia fell from 0.31% to 0.21%
- Gastritis fell from 0.82% to 0.6%
Diagnosis rates for shingles, sepsis, the flu, and pancreatitis were mostly unchanged between 2019 and 2023.
The only increase among the infections studied was for strep throat, which increased from a prevalence of 0.63% in 2019 to 0.85% in 2023, according to the data.
The prevalence of other infections and diseases including chlamydia, E Coli, acute hepatitis, carditis, nephritis, Lyme disease, respiratory syncytial virus, norovirus, tuberculosis, salmonella, and meningitis were too low to be studied, researchers noted.