© 2024 MJH Life Sciences™ and Patient Care Online. All rights reserved.
Drug Duo Improves COVID-19 Outcomes: Daily Dose
Patient Care brings primary care clinicians a lot of medical news every day—it’s easy to miss an important study. The Daily Dose provides a concise summary of one of the website's leading stories you may not have seen.
On October 10, 2024, we reported on a study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases that examined the mortality risk in adults hospitalized for COVID-19 during the Omicron period receiving remdesivir plus dexamethasone versus dexamethasone alone.
The study
Researchers analyzed data from the PINC AI Healthcare Database, which represents approximately 25% of yearly inpatient hospitalizations in the US. They identified adults hospitalized with COVID-19 who received either remdesivir plus dexamethasone or dexamethasone alone between December 2021 and April 2023.
Using propensity score matching, 33 037 individuals who received remdesivir plus dexamethasone were matched in a 1:1 ratio to those who received dexamethasone monotherapy and stratified by baseline oxygen requirements. Cox proportional hazards model was used to analyze time to 14- and 28-day in-hospital all-cause mortality.
The findings
At 14 days, remdesivir plus dexamethasone was associated with lower mortality risk vs dexamethasone alone across all baseline oxygen requirements:
No supplemental oxygen: adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) 0.79 (95% CI 0.72-0.87).
Low flow oxygen: aHR 0.70 (95% CI 0.64-0.77).
High flow oxygen/non-invasive ventilation: aHR 0.69 (95% CI 0.62-0.76).
Invasive mechanical ventilation/extracorporeal membrane oxygen: aHR 0.78 (95% CI 0.64-0.94).