Patient-level dataset to study the effect of COVID-19 in people with Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory autoimmune disease of the centralnervous system, causing increased vulnerability to infections and disabilityamong young adults. Ever since the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)outbreak, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2infections, there have been concerns among people with MS (PwMS) about thepotential interactions between various disease-modifying therapies andCOVID-19. The COVID-19 in MS Global Data Sharing Initiative (GDSI) wasinitiated in 2020 to address these concerns. This paper focuses on theanonymisation and open-sourcing of a GDSI sub-dataset, comprising data enteredby people with MS and clinicians using a fast data entry tool. The datasetincludes demographics, comorbidities, hospital stay, and COVID-19 symptoms ofPwMS. The dataset can be used to perform different statistical analyses toimprove our understanding of COVID-19 in MS. Furthermore, this dataset canalso be used within the context of educational activities to educate differentstakeholders on the complex data science topics that were used within theGDSI.