In-hospital use of ACE inhibitors/angiotensin receptor blockers associates with COVID-19 outcomes in African American patients

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Abstract

BACKGROUND The angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) D allele is more prevalent among African Americans compared with other races and ethnicities and has previously been associated with severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pathogenesis through excessive ACE1 activity. ACE inhibitors/angiotensin receptor blockers (ACE-I/ARB) may counteract this mechanism, but their association with COVID-19 outcomes has not been specifically tested in the African American population.METHODS We identified 6218 patients who were admitted into Mount Sinai hospitals with COVID-19 between February 24 and May 31, 2020, in New York City. We evaluated whether the outpatient and in-hospital use of ACE-I/ARB is associated with COVID-19 in-hospital mortality in an African American compared with non–African American population.RESULTS Of the 6218 patients with COVID-19, 1138 (18.3%) were ACE-I/ARB users. In a multivariate logistic regression model, ACE-I/ARB use was independently associated with a reduced risk of in-hospital mortality in the entire population (OR, 0.655; 95% CI, 0.505–0.850; P = 0.001), African American population (OR, 0.44; 95% CI, 0.249–0.779; P = 0.005), and non–African American population (OR, 0.748, 95% CI, 0.553–1.012, P = 0.06). In the African American population, in-hospital use of ACE-I/ARB was associated with improved mortality (OR, 0.378; 95% CI, 0.188–0.766; P = 0.006), whereas outpatient use was not (OR, 0.889; 95% CI, 0.375–2.158; P = 0.812). When analyzing each medication class separately, ARB in-hospital use was significantly associated with reduced in-hospital mortality in the African American population (OR, 0.196; 95% CI, 0.074–0.516; P = 0.001), whereas ACE-I use was not associated with impact on mortality in any population.CONCLUSION In-hospital use of ARB was associated with a significant reduction in in-hospital mortality among COVID-19–positive African American patients.FUNDING None.

Authors

Shilong Li, Rangaprasad Sarangarajan, Tomi Jun, Yu-Han Kao, Zichen Wang, Ke Hao, Emilio Schadt, Michael A. Kiebish, Elder Granger, Niven R. Narain, Rong Chen, Eric E. Schadt, Li Li