The Association of Opioid Use Disorder and COVID-19 in Shahroud, Iran

Abstract

Background COVID_19 quickly spread to the world, causing a pandemic. While some studies have found no link between Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) and COVID_19, the role of the opioid on COVID_19 is challenging. The present study aimed to determine the relationship between OUD and COVID_19. Methods This was a prospective cohort study. We used data from the third phase of the Shahroud eye cohort study on 4394 participants which started in September 2019 and ended before the COVID-19 epidemic in Shahroud in February 2020. The participants were followed for 10.5 months till November 2020. COVID-19 was detected by RT-PCR on swap samples from the oropharynx and nasopharynx. The incidence of COVID_19 compared in OUD and Non-OUD participants, and relative risk was calculated in Log Binomial Regression model. Results Among the 4394 participants with a mean age of 61.1 years, 120 people had OUD. The incidence of COVID_19 in participants with OUD and Non-OUD were 3.3% and 4.5%, respectively. The relative risk of OUD for COVID-19 was 0.75 (95% Confidence intervals: 0.28 _ 1.98; P= 0.555). Conclusions Opioid use disorder was not associated with COVID_19. The claim that people with OUD are less likely to develop COVID_19 is not supported by this data.

Risk of COVID-19 infection and the associated hospitalization, ICU admission and mortality in opioid use disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Finally, a total of eight articles were included in the systematic review [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29], of which three did not report OUD-only outcomes separately and reported the outcomes of overall SUD patients [22][23][24]. Table 1 illustrates the detail and findings of the articles included in the systematic review.…”

“…Table 1 illustrates the detail and findings of the articles included in the systematic review. The majority of studies were conducted in the United States [22,23,[25][26][27], while two were done in Iran [28,29] and one in Spain [24]. Moreover, the diagnosis of OUD was defined based on the interview [26,28,29], or from previously collected registries [23,27].…”

“…The majority of studies were conducted in the United States [22,23,[25][26][27], while two were done in Iran [28,29] and one in Spain [24]. Moreover, the diagnosis of OUD was defined based on the interview [26,28,29], or from previously collected registries [23,27].…”

“…Five studies were included in the meta-analyses [25][26][27][28][29], representing 73,345,758 participants, of whom 49,184 had OUD. The mean age of participants was 57.90 ± 13.4, years and 45.67% of them were male.…”

“…Out of the eight quality-assessed peer-reviewed articles included in the systematic review, seven were rated as high-quality [22,[24][25][26][27][28][29] and one as moderate-quality [23]. GRADE assessment indicated high certainty for estimating the primary outcome and crude hospitalization and moderate certainty for adjusted hospitalization and ICU admission.…”