Differential follow-up patterns in COVID-19 and comparison cohorts – Authors' reply

Reply by the current authors to the comments made by Rebecca Fuhrer & James A. Hanley (see record 2021-39396-008) on the original article (see record 2021-11939-030). Taquet, et al report that Fuhrer and Hanley are correct that the timing of COVID-19 and the control events differ and that, in turn, the duration of available follow-up differs between cohorts. They are also right that, as a result, there is a possible risk that the matching between cohorts might be partly lost at followup. With the benefits of the longer follow-up that is now available compared with when we did the study, we ran an additional sensitivity analysis in which the same cohorts of patients as in our primary analysis were followed up until Feb 12, 2021. Regarding the exclusion of patients from the analysis who had died after the index event, we included these patients as part of a sensitivity analysis in a follow-up study. Similar findings were obtained when patients who had died were included. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)