Project #195:
Effect of statin use on the incidence of severe COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic shaped healthcare provision in England, including prescription of chronic medications such as statins. Conversely, there is evidence to suggest that statins, which are commonly prescribed to lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease and strokes, may also have protective effects against COVID-19 hospitalisation and mortality.

Our goal is to better understand how the COVID-19 pandemic shaped statin prescription, and how statin use might affect COVID-19 outcomes. Specifically, this project has three aims: First, we aim to describe how prescription patterns of statins have changed before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic in England. Second, among adults above 40 years of age, we aim to compare rates of severe COVID-19 (defined as COVID-19 hospitalization or death) among those with versus without pre-existing statin prescription in the year before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in England (i.e. from 1 February 2019 to 1 February 2020). Third, among people without pre-existing statin use, we aim to compare the risk of severe COVID-19 (again defined as COVID-19 hospitalization or death) among people who newly started taking statins, versus those who did not, following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For the second and third aims looking at the effects of statin use on COVID-19 outcomes, we will use statistical techniques to account for measurable differences in demographic and clinical characteristics between the groups with versus without statin prescription, such that observed differences in COVID-19 outcomes can ideally be attributed to statin prescription. To refine our findings, we will rerun our analyses in specific subgroups of interest, e.g. people at greater risk of severe COVID-19 due to underlying medical conditions.

We will present our findings at international conferences and publish them in peer-reviewed scientific journals as articles available free of charge. We will also make our analytic code freely available for scrutiny and reuse for other analyses. We expect this work to benefit the public by contributing to pandemic preparedness, as it could inform future mitigation of service interruption during a pandemic and statins - a safe and commonly used medication - as a drug repurposing candidate for respiratory viruses.