Azvudine reduces the in-hospital mortality of COVID-19 patients: A retrospective cohort study
Kaican Zong, Hui Zhou, Wen Li, E Jiang, Yi Liu, Shiying Li
Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B, doi:10.1016/j.apsb.2023.07.007
In our retrospective cohort study, we aim to explore whether Azvudine modifies the risk of death in COVID-19 patients. It was conducted on the medical records of patients, consecutively admitted for COVID-19 pneumonia to two hospitals in Chongqing, China. Based on Azvudine treatment exposure, the patients were divided into Azvudine group and non-Azvudine group. We used 1:2 ratio propensity score matching (PSM) in our study to adjust for confounding factors and differences between Azvudine and non-Azvudine groups. There were 1072 patients included in our original cohort. With 1:2 ratio PSM, the Azvudine group included 195 patients and non-Azvudine group included 390 patients. The results showed that Azvudine treatment was associated with improved in-hospital mortality in overall population (OR 0.375, 95% CI 0.225e0.623, P < 0.001), severe subgroup (OR 0.239, 95% CI 0.107e0.535, P Z 0.001), critical subgroup (OR 0.091, 95% CI 0.011e0.769, P Z 0.028) in matched cohort with univariate analysis. And there was a significantly lower in-hospital mortality in overall population (11% vs. 24%, P＜0.001), severe sub-group (10% vs. 32%, P < 0.001) and critical sub-group (5% vs. 34%, P Z 0.017) in matched cohort. These results suggest Azvudine can reduce in-hospital mortality in overall COVID-19 patients, severe, and critical subgroup population.
Author contributions Kaican Zong and Shiying Li conceived and designed the study and took responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. All authors collected the data and had full access to all of the data in the study. All authors critically revised the manuscript for important intellectual content and gave final approval for the version to be published.
Conflicts of interest The authors have declared no conflict of interest.
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