RAAS inhibitors are not associated with mortality in COVID-19 patients: Findings from an observational multicenter study in Italy and a meta-analysis of 19 studies

OBJECTIVE: The hypothesis that been set forward that use of Renin Angiotensin Aldosterone System (RAAS) inhibitors is associated with COVID−19 severity. We set-up a multicenter Italian collaboration (CORIST Project, ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT04318418) to retrospectively investigate the relationship between RAAS inhibitors and COVID−19 in-hospital mortality. We also carried out an updated meta-analysis on the relevant studies. METHODS: We analyzed 4069 unselected patients with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection and hospitalized in 34 clinical centers in Italy from February 19, 2020 to May 23, 2020. The primary end-point in a time-to event analysis was in-hospital death, comparing patients who received angiotensin-converting–enzyme inhibitors (ACE—I) or angiotensin-receptor blockers (ARB) with patients who did not. Articles for the meta-analysis were retrieved until July 13th, 2020 by searching in web-based libraries, and data were combined using the general variance-based method. RESULTS: Out of 4069 COVID−19 patients, 13.5% and 13.3% received ACE-I or ARB, respectively. Use of neither ACE-I nor ARB was associated with mortality (multivariable hazard ratio (HR) adjusted also for COVID−19 treatments: 0.96, 95% confidence interval 0.77–1.20 and HR = 0.89, 0.67–1.19 for ACE-I and ARB, respectively). Findings were similar restricting the analysis to hypertensive (N = 2057) patients (HR = 1.00, 0.78–1.26 and HR = 0.88, 0.65–1.20) or when ACE-I or ARB were considered as a single group. Results from the meta-analysis (19 studies, 29,057 COVID−19 adult patients, 9700 with hypertension) confirmed the absence of association. CONCLUSIONS: In this observational study and meta-analysis of the literature, ACE-I or ARB use was not associated with severity or in-hospital mortality in COVID−19 patients.