The effect of corticosteroids, antibiotics, and anticoagulants on the development of post-COVID-19 syndrome in COVID-19 hospitalized patients

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