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Interrogating an ICD-coded electronic health records database to characterize the epidemiology of prosopagnosia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2020

Christina Pressl*
Affiliation:
Laboratory of Neural Systems, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA
Caroline S. Jiang
Affiliation:
Department of Biostatistics, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA
Joel Correa da Rosa
Affiliation:
Department of Explorative Biology, LEO Pharma, Ballerup, Denmark Center for Clinical and Translational Science, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA
Maximilian Friedrich
Affiliation:
Department of Neurology, University Hospital Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
Roger Vaughan
Affiliation:
Department of Biostatistics, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA Center for Clinical and Translational Science, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA
Winrich A. Freiwald
Affiliation:
Laboratory of Neural Systems, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA
Jonathan N. Tobin
Affiliation:
Center for Clinical and Translational Science, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA Clinical Directors Network (CDN), New York, NY, USA
*
Address for correspondence: C. Pressl, MD, MS, Laboratory of Neural Systems, Laboratory of Molecular Biology, The Rockefeller University, 1230 York Avenue, New York, NY 10065, USA. Tel: +1 212-327-7959. Email: cpressl@rockefeller.edu
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Abstract

Introduction:

Recognition of faces of family members, friends, and colleagues is an important skill essential for everyday life. Individuals affected by prosopagnosia (face blindness) have difficulty recognizing familiar individuals. The prevalence of prosopagnosia has been estimated to be as high as 3%. Prosopagnosia can severely impact the quality of life of those affected, and it has been suggested to co-occur with conditions such as depression and anxiety.

Methods:

To determine real-world diagnostic frequency of prosopagnosia and the spectrum of its comorbidities, we utilized a large database of more than 7.5 million de-identified electronic health records (EHRs) from patients who received care at major academic health centers and Federally Qualified Health Centers in New York City. We designed a computable phenotype to search the database for diagnosed cases of prosopagnosia, revealing a total of n = 902 cases. In addition, data from a randomly sampled matched control population (n = 100,973) were drawn from the database for comparative analyses to study the condition’s comorbidity landscape. Diagnostic frequency of prosopagnosia, epidemiological characteristics, and comorbidity landscape were assessed.

Results:

We observed prosopagnosia diagnoses at a rate of 0.012% (12 per 100,000 individuals). We discovered elevated frequency of prosopagnosia diagnosis for individuals who carried certain comorbid conditions, such as personality disorder, depression, epilepsy, and anxiety. Moreover, prosopagnosia diagnoses increased with the number of comorbid conditions.

Conclusions:

Results from this study show a wide range of comorbidities and suggest that prosopagnosia is vastly underdiagnosed. Findings imply important clinical consequences for the diagnosis and management of prosopagnosia as well as its comorbid conditions.

Information

Type
Research Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
© The Association for Clinical and Translational Science 2020
Figure 0

Table 1. Prosopagnosia computable phenotype

Figure 1

Table 2. Demographics

Figure 2

Table 3. Mixed effects logistic regression

Figure 3

Table 4. Additive effects

Figure 4

Table 5. Summary for patients with four or more comorbid conditions

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