Clinical efficacy of nirmatrelvir plus ritonavir in patients with COVID-19 and preexisting cardiovascular diseases.

Background: This study assessed the clinical efficacy of nirmatrelvir plus ritonavir (NMV-r) in treating patients with COVID-19 who have preexisting cardiovascular diseases (CVDs).

Methods: Patients with underlying CVDs and COVID-19 were included from the TriNetX network. We employed a 1:1 propensity score matching to create two comparable cohorts: patients receiving NMV-r and those not receiving NMV-r. The primary outcome was the composite outcome of all-cause hospitalization or death within 30 days.

Results: Propensity score matching yielded two matched cohorts of 10,847 patients each. The composite outcomes of all-cause hospitalization or death within 30 days were 2.2% (239 patients) in the NMV-r cohort and 4.7% (512 patients) in the control cohort, indicating reduced risk in the NMV-r cohort (hazard ratio [HR], 0.475; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0407-0.533). The NMV-r cohort exhibited lower risks of all-cause hospitalization (HR, 0.525; 95% CI, 0.449-0.615) and mortality (HR, 0.113; 95% CI, 0.052-0.246) compared with the control group. A similar trend was observed across most of the subgroups.

Conclusions: Our findings indicate that NMV-r to treat COVID-19 could reduce all-cause hospitalization and death in patients with CVDs.