Eur J Heart Fail . Association between Renin-Angiotensin-Aldosterone system inhibitor use and COVID-19 Hospitalization and death: A 1,4 million patient Nation-Wide registry analysis

[tetano]

Eur J Heart Fail


. 2020 Nov 22.
doi: 10.1002/ejhf.2060. Online ahead of print.
Association between Renin-Angiotensin-Aldosterone system inhibitor use and COVID-19 Hospitalization and death: A 1,4 million patient Nation-Wide registry analysis


Gianluigi Savarese ^{1 2} , Lina Benson ¹ , Johan Sundstr?m ³ , Lars H Lund ^{1 2}



Affiliations

• PMID: 33222412
• DOI: 10.1002/ejhf.2060

Abstract

Aims: Renin-angiotensin-aldosterone-system inhibitors (RAASi) improve outcomes in cardiorenal disease but concerns have been raised over increased risk of incident and death from Covid-19. We investigated the association between use of angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEi), angiotensin receptor blockers (ARB) or mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists (MRA) and Covid-19 hospitalization/death in a large nationwide population.
Methods and results: Patients with hypertension, heart failure, diabetes, kidney disease, or ischemic heart disease registered in the Swedish National Patient Registry until February 1^st 2020 were included and followed until May 31^st 2020. Covid-19 cases were defined based on hospitalization/death for Covid-19. Multivariable logistic and Cox regressions were fitted to investigate the association between ACEi/ARB and MRA and risk of hospitalization/death for Covid-19 in the overall population, and of all-cause mortality in Covid-19 cases. We performed consistency analysis to quantify the impact of potential unmeasured confounding. Of 1,387,746 patients (60% receiving ACEi/ARB and 5.8% MRA) 7,146 (0.51%) had incident hospitalization/death from Covid-19. After adjustment for 45 variables, ACEi/ARB use was associated with a reduced risk of hospitalization/death for Covid-19 (Odds Ratio [95% Confidence Interval]: 0.86[0.81-0.91]) in the overall population, and with reduced mortality in Covid-19 cases (Hazard Ratio: 0.89[0.82-0.96]). MRA use was not associated with risk of any outcome. Consistency analysis showed that unmeasured confounding would need to be large for there to be harmful signals associated with RAASi use.
Conclusions: In a 1.4 million nation-wide cohort, use of RAASi was not associated with increased risk of hospitalization for or death from Covid-19.

Keywords: Angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors; Angiotensin receptor blocker; Cardiovascular; Coronavirus; Covid-19; Mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist; Registry; Renin-angiotensin-aldosterone-system inhibitor; SARS-CoV-2; Sweden.