What this study adds
This study demonstrates that COVID-19 patients treated with
corticosteroids during hospital admission were less likely to develop
post-COVID-19 syndrome.
Aim: To assess the effect of commonly used drugs in the
treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients on the development of
post-COVID-19 syndrome.
Methods : Data from patients hospitalized in Medisch Spectrum
Twente with an COVID-19 infection was collected from two separate
databases, the MST clinical database containing the in-hospital
electronic health records of COVID-19 patients and the Post-COVID cohort
database containing patient follow-up data of the same patients. The
aforementioned databases were then merged to determine the association
between patient treatment with corticosteroids, antibiotics or
anticoagulants during the hospital stay and the development of
post-COVID-19 syndrome 6 months after hospital discharge.
Results : A total of 123 patients had clinical data and 6 months
follow-up data available. Out of these patients, 33 patients (26.8%)
had developed and were still affected by post-COVID-19 syndrome 6 months
after hospital discharge. Multivariate analysis showed that patients
treated with corticosteroids were associated with a significantly lower
chance (OR 0.32, 95% CI 0.11 to 0.90) of developing post-COVID-19
syndrome while antibiotics (OR 1.26, 95% CI 0.47 to 3.39) and
anticoagulants (OR 0.55, 95% CI 0.18 to 1.71) were not significantly
associated.Conclusion: This study showed that corticosteroids have a
significant protective effect on the development of post-COVID-19
syndrome in hospitalized patients. While anticoagulants also indicate a
protective trend, this effect was not statistically significant. On the
contrary, patients treated with antibiotics were shown to have increased
chances of developing post-COVID-19 syndrome, although this effect was
also not statistically significant.