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. 2021 Feb 10;11(2):116.
doi: 10.3390/jpm11020116.

Statin Therapy and the Risk of COVID-19: A Cohort Study of the National Health Insurance Service in South Korea

Tak Kyu Oh  1 , In-Ae Song  1 , Young-Tae Jeon  1   2
Affiliations

Statin Therapy and the Risk of COVID-19: A Cohort Study of the National Health Insurance Service in South Korea

Tak Kyu Oh et al. J Pers Med. .

Abstract

We aimed to investigate whether statin therapy is associated with the incidence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) among the South Korean population. In addition, we examined whether statin therapy affects hospital mortality among COVID-19 patients. The National Health Insurance Service (NHIS)-COVID-19 database in South Korea was used for data extraction for this population-based cohort study. A total of 122,040 adult individuals, with 22,633 (18.5%) in the statin therapy group and 101,697 (91.5%) in the control group, were included in the analysis. Among them, 7780 (6.4%) individuals were diagnosed with COVID-19 and hospital mortality occurred in 251 (3.2%) COVID-19 cases. After propensity score matching, logistic regression analysis showed that the odds of developing COVID-19 were 35% lower in the statin therapy group than in the control group (odds ratio: 0.65, 95% confidence interval: 0.60 to 0.71; p < 0.001). Regarding hospital mortality among COVID-19 patients, the multivariable model indicated that there were no differences between the statin therapy and control groups (odds ratio: 0.74, 95% confidence interval: 0.52 to 1.05; p = 0.094). Statin therapy may have potential benefits for the prevention of COVID-19 in South Korea. However, we found that statin therapy does not affect the hospital mortality of patients who are diagnosed with COVID-19.

Keywords: hospital mortality; hydroxymethylglutaryl-CoA reductase inhibitors; infections.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow chart depicting the process of participant selection. COVID-19, coronavirus disease-2019; PSM, propensity score matching.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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