Aspirin use associated with lower rates of death in hospitalized COVID-19 patients

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Mar 24 2022

Researchers at the George Washington University published findings from the world's largest cohort study showing that hospitalized patients with moderate COVID-19 who were given aspirin early on in their treatment had a lower risk of dying compared to patients who were not given aspirin.

This is our third study and the culmination of 15 months of work looking at aspirin use in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. We continue to find that aspirin use is associated with improved outcomes and lower rates of death in hospitalized patients. What's more, it's low cost and readily available, which is important in parts of the world where more expensive therapeutics might not be as accessible."

Jonathan Chow, Lead Researcher

The study included the largest data set of 112,269 patients hospitalized with moderate COVID-19. The data included patients enrolled from January 1, 2020, through September 10, 2021, at 64 health systems in the United States participating in the National Institute of Health's National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C).

Researchers found a 1.6% reduction in mortality when aspirin was given within the first day of hospitalization in patients with moderate disease severity and that patients were less prone to forming blood clots. They also found that elderly patients and patients with one or more comorbidities especially benefit from early aspirin therapy.

Keith Crandall, Director of the Computational Biology Institute (CBI) at George Washington University, the organization that helped assemble and input GW's data into the NIH database and curate the dataset into a usable format for the statistical analysis, said, "This research is vital to providing physicians and patients effective and accessible COVID-19 treatments to help reduce in-hospital mortality rates and help people recover from this potentially devastating disease."

Chow and his team have been focused on this topic since the beginning of the pandemic. Their first study published in April 2021 and the second study published in November 2021.