Published online Mar 9, 2022. doi: 10.5492/wjccm.v11.i2.92
Peer-review started: November 18, 2021
First decision: December 27, 2021
Revised: January 3, 2022
Accepted: January 20, 2022
Article in press: January 20, 2022
Published online: March 9, 2022
Processing time: 104 Days and 11 Hours
Since December 2019, an outbreak of pneumonia caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome - coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has led to a life-threatening ongoing pandemic worldwide. A retrospective study by Chow et al showed aspirin use was associated with decreased intensive care unit (ICU) admissions in hospitalized coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients. Recently, the RECOVERY TRIAL showed no associated reductions in the 28-d mortality or the progression to mechanical ventilation of such patients. With these conflicting findings, our study was aimed at evaluating the impact of daily aspirin intake on the outcome of COVID-19 patients.
To study was aimed at evaluating the impact of daily aspirin intake on the outcome of COVID-19 patients.
This retrospective cohort study was conducted on 125 COVID-19 positive patients. Subgroup analysis to evaluate the association of demographics and comorbidities was undertaken. The impact of chronic aspirin use was assessed on the survival outcomes, need for mechanical ventilation, and progression to ICU. Variables were evaluated using the chi-square test and multinomial logistic regression analysis.
125 patients were studied, 30.40% were on daily aspirin, and 69.60% were not. Cross-tabulation of the clinical parameters showed that hypertension (P = 0.004), hyperlipidemia (0.016), and diabetes mellitus (P = 0.022) were significantly associated with aspirin intake. Regression analysis for progression to the ICU, need for mechanical ventilation and survival outcomes against daily aspirin intake showed no statistical significance.
Our study suggests that daily aspirin intake has no protective impact on COVID-19 illness-associated survival outcomes, mechanical ventilation, or progression to ICU level of care.
Core Tip: Our study suggests that aspirin has no beneficial effects with regards to progression to intensive care unit (ICU) from the medical floors in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) positive patients. This study was conducted on the patients presenting during the early phase of the pandemic when there was little evidence on the most beneficial modality of treatment. Over the last 2 years we have learned about the pro-thrombotic nature of COVID-19. Since aspirin is a widely dispensed medication in our adult population, we questioned if its chronic use could have a preventive effect on ICU progression of patients admitted to the medical floors. However, our data analysis suggests that there was no such protective effect.