Association of prescribed medications with the risk of COVID-19 infection and severity among adults in South Korea

Objectives: Concerns have been expressed that some drugs may increase susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection. In contrast, other drugs have generated interest as potential therapeutic agents. Methods: All adults aged >= 18 years who were tested for COVID-19 were included. Exposure was defined as a prescription of study drugs which would have been continued until 7 days prior to test for COVID-19 or later. The outcome measures were the diagnosis of COVID-19 and severe COVID-19. Disease risk score matching and multiple logistic regression was used. Results: Matched claims and testing results were available for 219,961 subjects, of whom 7,341 (3.34%) were diagnosed with COVID-19. Patients were matched to 36,705 controls, and the subset of 878 patients of severe COVID-19 also matched with 1,927 mild-to-moderate patients. Angiotensin receptor blockers were not associated with either the diagnosis of COVID-19 (adjusted OR [aOR], 1.02; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.90-1.15) or severe disease (aOR, 1.11; 95% CI, 0.87-1.42). The use of hydroxychloroquine was not associated with a lower risk for COVID-19 (aOR, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.53-1.66) or severe disease (aOR, 3.51; 95% CI, 0.76-16.22). Conclusions: In this national claims data-based case-control study, no commonly prescribed medications were associated with risk of COVID-19 infection or COVID-19 severity. (c) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of International Society for Infectious Diseases. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ncnd/4.0/).

Automated summary

This study investigated the impact of different drugs on COVID-19 infection and disease severity, finding that commonly used medications such as angiotensin receptor blockers and hydroxychloroquine were not associated with the risk of COVID-19 infection.