Lopinavir/Ritonavir and Darunavir/Cobicistat in Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients: Findings From the Multicenter Italian CORIST Study

• Main Authors: Augusto Di Castelnuovo, Simona Costanzo, Andrea Antinori, Nausicaa Berselli, Lorenzo Blandi, Marialaura Bonaccio, Raffaele Bruno, Roberto Cauda, Alessandro Gialluisi, Giovanni Guaraldi, Lorenzo Menicanti, Marco Mennuni, Ilaria My, Agostino Parruti, Giuseppe Patti, Stefano Perlini, Francesca Santilli, Carlo Signorelli, Giulio G. Stefanini, Alessandra Vergori, Walter Ageno, Luca Aiello, Piergiuseppe Agostoni, Samir Al Moghazi, Rosa Arboretti, Filippo Aucella, Greta Barbieri, Martina Barchitta, Alessandro Bartoloni, Carolina Bologna, Paolo Bonfanti, Lucia Caiano, Laura Carrozzi, Antonio Cascio, Giacomo Castiglione, Mauro Chiarito, Arturo Ciccullo, Antonella Cingolani, Francesco Cipollone, Claudia Colomba, Crizia Colombo, Francesco Crosta, Giovanni Dalena, Chiara Dal Pra, Gian Battista Danzi, Damiano D'Ardes, Katleen de Gaetano Donati, Francesco Di Gennaro, Giuseppe Di Tano, Gianpiero D'Offizi, Tommaso Filippini, Francesco Maria Fusco, Carlo Gaudiosi, Ivan Gentile, Giancarlo Gini, Elvira Grandone, Gabriella Guarnieri, Gennaro L. F. Lamanna, Giovanni Larizza, Armando Leone, Veronica Lio, Angela Raffaella Losito, Gloria Maccagni, Stefano Maitan, Sandro Mancarella, Rosa Manuele, Massimo Mapelli, Riccardo Maragna, Lorenzo Marra, Giulio Maresca, Claudia Marotta, Franco Mastroianni, Maria Mazzitelli, Alessandro Mengozzi, Francesco Menichetti, Jovana Milic, Filippo Minutolo, Beatrice Molena, R. Mussinelli, Cristina Mussini, Maria Musso, Anna Odone, Marco Olivieri, Emanuela Pasi, Annalisa Perroni, Francesco Petri, Biagio Pinchera, Carlo A. Pivato, Venerino Poletti, Claudia Ravaglia, Marco Rossato, Marianna Rossi, Anna Sabena, Francesco Salinaro, Vincenzo Sangiovanni, Carlo Sanrocco, Laura Scorzolini, Raffaella Sgariglia, Paola Giustina Simeone, Michele Spinicci, Enrico Maria Trecarichi, Giovanni Veronesi, Roberto Vettor, Andrea Vianello, Marco Vinceti, Elena Visconti, Laura Vocciante, Raffaele De Caterina, Licia Iacoviello, The COVID-19 RISK and Treatments (CORIST) Collaboration
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-06-01
• Series: Frontiers in Medicine
• Subjects: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; darunavir; lopinavir; in-hospital mortality
• Online Access: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2021.639970/full

Background: Protease inhibitors have been considered as possible therapeutic agents for COVID-19 patients.Objectives: To describe the association between lopinavir/ritonavir (LPV/r) or darunavir/cobicistat (DRV/c) use and in-hospital mortality in COVID-19 patients.Study Design: Multicenter observational study of COVID-19 patients admitted in 33 Italian hospitals. Medications, preexisting conditions, clinical measures, and outcomes were extracted from medical records. Patients were retrospectively divided in three groups, according to use of LPV/r, DRV/c or none of them. Primary outcome in a time-to event analysis was death. We used Cox proportional-hazards models with inverse probability of treatment weighting by multinomial propensity scores.Results: Out of 3,451 patients, 33.3% LPV/r and 13.9% received DRV/c. Patients receiving LPV/r or DRV/c were more likely younger, men, had higher C-reactive protein levels while less likely had hypertension, cardiovascular, pulmonary or kidney disease. After adjustment for propensity scores, LPV/r use was not associated with mortality (HR = 0.94, 95% CI 0.78 to 1.13), whereas treatment with DRV/c was associated with a higher death risk (HR = 1.89, 1.53 to 2.34, E-value = 2.43). This increased risk was more marked in women, in elderly, in patients with higher severity of COVID-19 and in patients receiving other COVID-19 drugs.Conclusions: In a large cohort of Italian patients hospitalized for COVID-19 in a real-life setting, the use of LPV/r treatment did not change death rate, while DRV/c was associated with increased mortality. Within the limits of an observational study, these data do not support the use of LPV/r or DRV/c in COVID-19 patients.