Do adults prescribed non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs have an increased risk of death from COVID-19?
OpenSAFELY: Do adults prescribed non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs have an increased risk of death from COVID-19?
How to cite: OpenSAFELY: Do adults prescribed non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs have an increased risk of death from COVID-19? The OpenSAFELY Collaborative, Angel YS Wong, Brian MacKenna, Caroline E Morton, Anna Schultze, Alex J Walker, Krishnan Bhaskaran, Jeremy P Brown, Christopher T Rentsch, Elizabeth Williamson, Henry Drysdale, Richard Croker, Seb Bacon, William Hulme, Chris Bates, Helen J Curtis, Amir Mehrkar, David Evans, Peter Inglesby, Jonathan Cockburn, Helen I McDonald, Laurie Tomlinson, Rohini Mathur, Kevin Wing, Harriet Forbes, John Parry, Frank Hester, Sam Harper, Stephen JW Evans, Liam Smeeth, Ian J Douglas, Ben Goldacre medRxiv 2020.08.12.20171405; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.12.20171405
Abstract
Importance: There has been speculation that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) may negatively affect coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outcomes, yet clinical evidence is limited.
Objective: To assess the association between NSAID use and deaths from COVID-19 using OpenSAFELY, a secure analytical platform.
Design: Two cohort studies (1st March-14th June 2020).
Setting: Working on behalf of NHS England, we used routine clinical data from >17 million patients in England linked to death data from the Office for National Statistics.
Participants Study 1: General population (people with an NSAID prescription in the last three years). Study 2: people with rheumatoid arthritis/osteoarthritis.
Exposures: Current NSAID prescription within the 4 months before 1st March 2020.
Main Outcome and Measure: We used Cox regression to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) for COVID-19 related death in people currently prescribed NSAIDs, compared with those not currently prescribed NSAIDs, adjusting for age, sex, comorbidities and other medications.
Results: In Study 1, we included 535,519 current NSAID users and 1,924,095 non-users in the general population. The crude HR for current use was 1.25 (95% CI, 1.07–1.46), versus non-use. We observed no evidence of difference in risk of COVID-19 related death associated with current use (HR, 0.95, 95% CI, 0.80–1.13) in the fully adjusted model.
In Study 2, we included 1,711,052 people with rheumatoid arthritis/osteoarthritis, of whom 175,631 (10%) were current NSAID users. The crude HR for current use was 0.43 (95% CI, 0.36–0.52), versus non-use. In the fully adjusted model, we observed a lower risk of COVID-19 related death (HR, 0.78, 95% CI, 0.65–0.94) associated with current use of NSAID versus non-use.
Conclusion and Relevance: We found no evidence of a harmful effect of NSAIDs on COVID-19 related deaths. Risks of COVID-19 do not need to influence decisions about therapeutic use of NSAIDs.