Abstract
OBJECTIVES: To explore whether COVID-19 vaccination protects against hospital admission by preventing infections and severe disease.
METHODS: We leveraged the UK Biobank and studied associations of COVID-19 vaccination (BioNTech-BNT162b2 or Oxford-AstraZeneca-ChAdOx1) with hospitalizations from cardiovascular and other selected diseases (N = 393,544; median follow-up = 54 days among vaccinated individuals). Multivariable Cox, Poisson regression, propensity score matching, and inverse probability treatment weighting analyses were performed. We also performed adjustment using prescription-time distribution matching, and prior event rate ratio.
RESULTS: We observed that COVID-19 vaccination (at least one dose), compared with no vaccination, was associated with reduced short-term risks of hospitalizations from stroke (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.178, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.127-0.250, P = 1.50e-23), venous thromboembolism (HR = 0.426, CI: 0.270-0.673, P = 2.51e-4), dementia (HR = 0.114, CI: 0.060-0.216; P = 2.24e-11), non-COVID-19 pneumonia (HR = 0.108, CI: 0.080-0.145; P = 2.20e-49), coronary artery disease (HR = 0.563, CI: 0.416-0.762; P = 2.05e-4), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (HR = 0.212, CI: 0.126-0.357; P = 4.92e-9), type 2 diabetes (HR = 0.216, CI: 0.096-0.486, P = 2.12e-4), heart failure (HR = 0.174, CI: 0.118-0.256, P = 1.34e-18), and renal failure (HR = 0.415, CI: 0.255-0.677, P = 4.19e-4), based on standard Cox regression models. Among the previously mentioned results, reduced hospitalizations for stroke, heart failure, non-COVID-19 pneumonia, and dementia were consistently observed across regression, propensity score matching/inverse probability treatment weighting, prescription-time distribution matching, and prior event rate ratio. The results for two-dose vaccination were similar.
CONCLUSIONS: Taken together, this study provides further support to the safety and benefits of COVID-19 vaccination, and such benefits may extend beyond reduction of infection risk or severity per se. However, causal relationship cannot be concluded and further studies are required.