Rastmanesh Reza, Krishnia Lucky, Kashyap Manoj Kumar
The Nutrition Society, London, UK.
Amity Centre of Nanotechnology, Amity University Haryana, Panchgaon, Haryana, India.
Clin Med Insights Endocrinol Diabetes. 2023 Jul 29;16:11795514231189073. doi: 10.1177/11795514231189073. eCollection 2023.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed many aspects of people's lives, including not only individual social behavior, healthcare procedures, and altered physiological and pathophysiological responses. As a result, some medical studies may be influenced by one or more hidden factors brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the literature review method, we are briefly discussing the studies that are confounded by COVID-19 and facemask-induced partiality and how these factors can be further complicated with other confounding variables. Facemask wearing has been reported to produce partiality in studies of ophthalmology (particularly dry eye and related ocular diseases), sleep studies, cognitive studies (such as emotion-recognition accuracy research, etc.), and gender-influenced studies, to mention a few. There is a possibility that some other COVID-19 related influences remain unrecognized in medical research. To account for heterogeneity, current and future studies need to consider the severity of the initial illness (such as diabetes, other endocrine disorders), and COVID-19 infection, the timing of analysis, or the presence of a control group. Face mask-induced influences may confound the results of diabetes studies in many ways.
新冠疫情改变了人们生活的许多方面，不仅包括个人社交行为、医疗程序，还包括生理和病理生理反应的改变。因此，一些医学研究可能会受到新冠疫情带来的一个或多个隐藏因素的影响。通过文献综述方法，我们简要讨论了受到新冠疫情和口罩导致的偏倚影响的研究，以及这些因素如何与其他混杂变量进一步复杂化。据报道，戴口罩在眼科研究（特别是干眼症及相关眼部疾病）、睡眠研究、认知研究（如情绪识别准确性研究等）以及性别影响研究等方面产生了偏倚。在医学研究中，其他一些与新冠疫情相关的影响可能仍未被认识到。为了考虑异质性，当前和未来的研究需要考虑初始疾病的严重程度（如糖尿病、其他内分泌疾病）、新冠病毒感染情况、分析时间或对照组的存在。口罩导致的影响可能会在许多方面混淆糖尿病研究的结果。
