Real-World Inpatient Use of Medications Repurposed for Coronavirus Disease 2019 in United States Hospitals, March-May 2020

Sameer S Kadri; Cumhur Y Demirkale; Junfeng Sun; Lindsay M Busch; Jeffrey R Strich; Ning Rosenthal; Sarah Warner

doi:10.1093/ofid/ofaa616

Real-World Inpatient Use of Medications Repurposed for Coronavirus Disease 2019 in United States Hospitals, March-May 2020

Open Forum Infect Dis. 2020 Dec 15;8(2):ofaa616. doi: 10.1093/ofid/ofaa616. eCollection 2021 Feb.

Authors

Sameer S Kadri¹, Cumhur Y Demirkale¹, Junfeng Sun¹, Lindsay M Busch², Jeffrey R Strich¹, Ning Rosenthal³, Sarah Warner¹

Affiliations

¹ Critical Care Medicine Department, NIH Clinical Center, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
² Division of Infectious Diseases, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
³ Premier Inc., Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

Abstract

We report off-label use patterns for medications repurposed for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) at 318 US hospitals. Inpatient hydroxychloroquine use declined by 80%, whereas corticosteroids and tocilizumab were initiated 2 days earlier in May versus March 2020. Two thirds of ventilated COVID-19 patients were already receiving corticosteroids during March-May 2020, resembling pre-COVID use in mechanically ventilated influenza patients.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; medications; repurposed; trends.

Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Infectious Diseases Society of America 2020.

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