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Data Access Register - full project summary

Application ID LLC_0028
Project Title Identifying clusters of COVID-19 and Long Covid symptoms
Lead Applicant Charlotte James
Organisation(s) Name(s) University of Bristol
Approval Date 19/01/2023
Application Status Approved
Lay Summary

We would like to understand if symptoms of COVID-19 and Long COVID group together. We want to answer questions like “does having COVID-19 with a cough make it more likely that you will lose your sense of smell?” We will do this by combining data from 15 studies into one large dataset. The dataset will have information about when a person had COVID-19 and what symptoms they had. It will also include age, sex and ethnicity. We will group people according to their symptoms and to find out if age, sex, ethnicity or time since COVID infection makes a person more likely to have a group of symptoms.

 

Other researchers have done a similar project in 9 of the 15 studies separately. They found two groups of symptoms. We will replicate their analysis to confirm these findings, and then expand it to all 15 studies. If some symptom groups are less common, by combining data from 15 studies into one dataset, we are more likely to identify them. Knowing which symptoms group together may help doctors to diagnose Long COVID and improve the quality of life of people that have it.

Datasets Requested

Study data

  • Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC)
  • British Cohort Study 1970 (BCS 70)
  • Born in Bradford (BiB)
  • English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA)
  • Extended Cohort for E-health, Environment and DNA (EXCEED)
  • Millennium Cohort Study (MCS)
  • National Child Development Study 1958 (NCDS58)
  • Next Step
  • Northern Ireland Cohort for the Longitudinal study of Ageing (NICOLA)
  • National Survey of Health and Development 1946 (NSHD46)
  • Southall and Brent Revisited (SABRE)
  • TRACK Covid-19
  • TWINS UK
  • UK Household Longitudinal Study (UK HLS)
  • Generation Scotland

Linked Data

  • NHS Digital Demographics
  • NHS Digital Civil Registration – Deaths
  • NHS Digital Hospital Episode Statistics Admitted Patient Care
  • NHS Digital Hospital Episode Statistics Critical Care
  • NHS Digital Hospital Episode Statistics Outpatient
  • NHS Digital Hospital Episode Statistics Accident and Emergency
  • NHS Digital Medicines Dispensed in Primary Care
  • NHS Digital GDPPR Data for Pandemic Planning and Research (COVID-19)
  • NHS Digital Covid-19 Vaccination Status
  • NHS Digital COVID-19 Second Generation Surveillance System (Pillar 1 & Pillar 2)
  • NHS Digital NPex (Pillar 2)
  • NHS Digital Covid-19 UK Non-hospital Antibody Testing Results (Pillar 3)
Results & Impact