The Risk of Infective Endocarditis among COVID-19 Patients with Non-Medical Opioid Use

Author Info

R. Constance Wiener Christopher Waters Cassandra Bambrick Ruchi Bhandari

Corresponding Author

Ruchi Bhandari
Assistant Professor, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, West Virginia University, School of Public Health, Robert C Byrd Health Sciences Center North, Morgantown, West Virginia, USA

A B S T R A C T

Patients with opioid use disorder are more likely to get coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Cardiovascular diseases frequently present in COVID-19 patients and can increase their susceptibility to invasive infectious diseases, such as infective endocarditis (IE). This study examines the difference in IE incidence following COVID-19 diagnosis between individuals with and without non-medical opioid use. De-identified electronic medical records data were retrieved from TriNetX, a web-based database. Patients in the U.S., aged 18-60 years, with a diagnosis of COVID-19 during January 2020 - January 2021 were included in this study. Development of IE was determined within three months after COVID-19 diagnosis. Logistic regression was conducted to estimate the risk of developing IE between COVID-19 patients with and without opioid use after propensity score matching. COVID-19 patients with non-medical opioid use had 6.8 times the risk of developing IE compared with COVID-19 patients without opioid use (95% CI: 5.44, 8.56; p<0.0001) after propensity score matching. Findings suggest a significant risk of IE among COVID-19 patients with a history of non-medical opioid use. It provides objective evidence to account for baseline opioid use in the risk assessment of IE among COVID-19 patients.

Article Info

Article Type

Research Article

Publication history

Received: Fri 13, Aug 2021
Accepted: Mon 30, Aug 2021
Published: Wed 15, Sep 2021

Copyright

© 2023 Ruchi Bhandari. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Hosting by Science Repository.
DOI: 10.31487/j.JICOA.2021.03.08