Effect of COVID-19 on the Long-term Cardiovascular Outcomes among Patients with Alcohol Use Disorder: A Retrospective Cohort Study Including 45,842 Patients

Abstract

Objectives This study was conducted to determine the risk of major acute cardiovascular events (MACEs) following COVID-19 among patients with alcohol use disorder (AUD). Methods This is a 1-year follow-up retrospective cohort study that used data from TriNetX, a multi-institutional research network platform. We compared the risks of incident MACEs in patients with AUD who had a positive diagnosis for COVID-19 and patients who had not had COVID-19 during the follow-up year. Results We enrolled 45,842 patients with AUD with and without COVID-19 history who had similar baseline characteristics from matching. During the follow-up period, the patients with AUD with COVID-19 history had a higher risk of overall MACEs than that of those without COVID-19 history (hazard ratio [HR], 2.013; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.810–2.240). In addition, the patients with AUD with COVID-19 history had a higher risk of myocardial infarction (HR, 3.778; 95% CI, 2.873–4.969), stroke (HR, 2.411; 95% CI, 2.016–2.883), heart failure (HR, 2.206; 95% CI, 1.866–2.607), arrhythmia (HR, 2.359; 95% CI, 2.041–2.727), and inflammatory heart disease (HR, 3.042; 95% CI, 1.976–4.682). Conclusions Patients with AUD who survived COVID-19 had a significantly higher risk of incident cardiovascular diseases within 12 months than that of the patients with AUD without COVID-19 history.