Global impact of COVID-19 on non-communicable disease management: descriptive analysis of access to FRAX fracture risk o

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ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Global impact of COVID-19 on non-communicable disease management: descriptive analysis of access to FRAX fracture risk online tool for prevention of osteoporotic fractures E. V. McCloskey 1,2

&

N. C. Harvey 3,4 & H. Johansson 2,5 & M. Lorentzon 5,6,7 & L. Vandenput 5,6 & E. Liu 5 & J. A. Kanis 2,5

Received: 10 June 2020 / Accepted: 7 July 2020 # The Author(s) 2020

Abstract Summary The COVID-19 pandemic, and its management, is markedly impacting the management of osteoporosis as judged by access to online FRAX fracture risk assessments. Globally, access was 58% lower in April than in February 2020. Strategies to improve osteoporosis care, with greater use of fracture risk assessments, offer a partial solution. Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic is having a significant detrimental impact on the management of chronic diseases including osteoporosis. We have quantified the global impact by examining changes in the usage of online FRAX fracture risk assessments before and after the declaration of the pandemic (11 March 2020). Methods The study comprised a retrospective analysis using GoogleAnalytics data on daily sessions on the FRAX® website (www.sheffield.ac.uk/FRAX) from November 2019 to April 2020 (main analysis period February–April 2020), and the geographical source of that activity. Results Over February–April 2020, the FRAX website recorded 460,495 sessions from 184 countries, with 210,656 sessions in February alone. In March and April, the number of sessions fell by 23.1% and 58.3% respectively, a pattern not observed over the same period in 2019. There were smaller reductions in Asia than elsewhere, partly related to earlier and less-marked nadirs in some countries (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Vietnam). In Europe, the majority of countries (24/31, 77.4%) reduced usage by at least 50% in April. Seven countries showed smaller reductions (range − 2.85 to − 44.1%) including Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Finland. There was no significant relationship between the reduction in FRAX usage and measures of disease burden such as COVID-attributed deaths per million of the population. Conclusion This study documents a marked global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the management of osteoporosis as reflected by FRAX online fracture risk assessments. The analysis suggests that impact may relate to the societal and healthcare measures taken to ameliorate the pandemic. Keywords COVID-19 . Fracture . FRAX . Non-communicable diseases (NCD) . Osteoporosis Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00198-020-05542-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * E. V. McCloskey [email protected] 1

Department of Oncology and Metabolism, Academic Unit of Bone Metabolism, Metabolic Bone Centre, Northern General Hospital, Centre for Integrated Research in Musculoskeletal Ageing, Mellanby Centre for Bone Research, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S5 7AU, UK

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Centre for Meta