Impact of ACEI/ARB on clinical outcomes in Chinese patients with COVID-19: a meta-analysis

ABSTRACT

Objective To systematically review the impact of ACEI/ARB (angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor/angiotensin receptor antagonist) treatment on the clinical outcomes of Chinese patients with COVID-19 infections. Methods PubMed, EMbase, Web of Science, The Cochrane Library, CNKI, WanFang Data, and VIP databases were electronically searched to collect cohort studies on the impact of the treatment with ACEI/ARB on the clinical outcomes of Chinese patients with COVID-19 infections from January 2020 to January 2022. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data, and assessed the risk of bias of the included studies. Then, meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.3 software. Results A total of 17 cohort studies involving 4 912 subjects were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that patients who were prescribed ACEI/ARB had shorter hospital stays (SMD=-0.28, 95%CI -0.46 to -0.11, P=0.002) and a lower mortality rate (OR=0.47, 95%CI 0.36 to 0.62, P<0.000 01) than patients who did not take ACEI/ARB. Conclusion Current evidence shows that the use of ACEI/ARB drugs can improve the clinical prognosis of Chinese patients with COVID-19 infections. Due to the limited quality and quantity of the included studies, more high-quality studies are needed to verify the above conclusion.