Clonal hematopoiesis and COVID‐19 hospitalization in Danish adults

The main driver of CHIP progression is age, but other factors like smoking or chemotherapy exposure can also have significant effects. SEE PDF] In summary, we observed that the risk of COVID-19 hospitalization increased with the presence of multiple or large (VAF ≥ 10%) CHIP clone(s) in this study of 470 Danish individuals, PCR-confirmed positive for SARS-CoV-2 while 60–89 years old. In the subset of 235 COVID-19 hospitalized cases, we did not find CHIP to be a risk factor for ICU admission or in-hospital death, in contrast to general admission, which is also consistent with findings by Duployez et al., Hameister et al., Petzer et al., Miller et al., and Del Pozo-Valero et al. The main limitations of our study include the collection of blood samples across several years, which could bias our measurement of CHIP but is mitigated through matching; the use of self-reported and hospital-recorded lifestyle and clinical information, which can have different accuracies; and our inability to differentiate individuals with past smoking habits from those who have never smoked.