Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and its control measures on cardiovascular and antidiabetic drugs use in France in 2020: a nationwide repeated cohort study

Since pandemic start, patients may have faced difficulties in accessing to care and treatment. This study aimed at assessing the impact of COVID-19 pandemic and its control measures on the use of drugs indicated in cardiovascular prevention and diabetes mellitus in France. From 09/17/2018 to 09/20/2020, a repeated cohort analysis was performed using the French nationwide health insurance databases. The pandemic impact was assessed using time-series analyses and unobserved components model for the weekly number of patients with (i) drug dispensing, (ii) ongoing treatment, (iii) treatment initiation, (iv) treatment disruption. Overall, 14,822,132 patients with cardiovascular drug dispensings and 3,231,618 with antidiabetic ones were identified. After a sharp spike in the amount of dispensings in the week the first national lockdown was announced, the period was marked by decreased levels and trends. Altogether, the estimated impact of the pandemic on dispensings appeared limited over the lockdown period (1–3% lack in dispensings). During lockdown, the weekly numbers of treatment disruptions remained stable whereas a significant decrease in treatment initiations was observed for almost all drug classes (e.g. β-blockers initiations: − 8.9%). Conversely, the post-lockdown period showed increases in treatment disruptions especially for antihypertensive and lipid lowering drugs (e.g. statins disruptions: + 4.9%). The pandemic and associated measures had a significant impact on cardiovascular and antidiabetic drugs use in France, mostly consisting in decreases of treatment initiations over lockdown and increases in treatment disruptions afterwards. Both could result in increased morbimortality that remains to be assessed.