Aspirin Use is Associated with Decreased Mortality in Patients with COVID-19: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis


This article is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed [what does this mean?]. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.

ABSTRACT

Background Novel Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has resulted in more than three and half million deaths worldwide as of June 6, 2021. The role of aspirin in prevention of COVID-19 mortality has not been much studied. We aimed to study the relationship between aspirin use and covid-19 mortality.

Methods

We searched PubMed, MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Cochrane database for studies from January 2019 till June 6, 2021 with inclusion criteria of RCT, Cohort study, studies reporting mortality, and comparison studies on aspirin versus non-aspirin. Statistical analysis was done with Review Manager 5.4 statistical software using the inverse variance method. We assessed the pooled hazard ratio (HR), and 95% confidence interval using the random effect model and I-squared test was used to determine statistical heterogeneity.

Results

We included five retrospective cohort studies which met our inclusion criteria with total of 14065 participants in both groups. There were 6797 participants in the aspirin group and 7268 participants in the non-aspirin group. Our results show that the use of aspirin was associated with 53% decrease in mortality compared to non-aspirin in patients with COVID-19. In the analysis restricted to patients hospitalized for COVID-19, the use of aspirin was associated with a 49% reduction in the risk for in-hospital mortality.

Conclusions

Our results show that aspirin is associated with decrease in both overall mortality and in-hospital mortality in patients with COVID-19.