ArticleDrug and alcohol dependence2022
Substance use disorders and COVID-19: An analysis of nation-wide Veterans Health Administration electronic health records.
Article in Drug and alcohol dependence, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 35 citations in OpenAlex.
- Associations of Cannabis and Tobacco Use With Suicide Attempt, Suicide Death, and Overdose Death Among Veterans Prescribed Opioid Analgesics.American journal of preventive medicine · 2026Article
- Implications of COVID-19 Restrictions on the Ethics and Methods of a Multi-Site Study on Alcohol and Other Drug (AOD) Use Treatment among Men in South Africa.Journal of empirical research on human research ethics : JERHRE · 2026Article
- Global substance use disorders burden from 1990 to 2021: post-COVID shifts and widening inequalities.Journal of global health · 2026Article
- Incidence of SARS-CoV-2 and all-cause mortality in persons with co-occurring substance use disorder and mental illness during the pandemic: a Norwegian cohort study.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2024Article
- Structural and social changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic and their impact on engagement in substance use disorder treatment services: a qualitative study among people with a recent history of injection drug use in Baltimore, Maryland.Harm reduction journal · 2024Article
- Prevalence of Alcohol Use Characterized by Phosphatidylethanol in Patients With Respiratory Failure Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic.CHEST critical care · 2024Article
- Dried Cannabis Use, Tobacco Smoking, and COVID-19 Infection: Findings from a Longitudinal Observational Cohort Study.Cannabis (Albuquerque, N.M.) · 2024Article
- SARSCoV-2 antibody prevalence and titers in persons living with HIV cared for at a large tertiary reference center in Mexico City.Virology journal · 2023Article
- Prevalence and correlates of SARS-CoV-2 seropositivity among people who inject drugs in Baltimore, Maryland.Drug and alcohol dependence reports · 2023Article
- Association between Substance Misuse and Outcomes in Critically III Patients with Pneumonia.Annals of the American Thoracic Society · 2023Article
- Mental disorders, COVID-19-related life-saving measures and mortality in France: A nationwide cohort study.PLoS medicine · 2023Article
- Review
- Comparing COVID-19-related Morbidity and Mortality Between Patients With and Without Substance Use Disorders: A Retrospective Cohort Study.Substance abuse : research and treatment · 2023Article
- COVID-19-Related Death in Patients with Alcohol or Substance Use Disorders.European addiction research · 2023Article
- Trends in psychiatric diagnoses by COVID-19 infection and hospitalization among patients with and without recent clinical psychiatric diagnoses in New York city from March 2020 to August 2021.Translational psychiatry · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
15 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundSubstance use disorders (SUD) elevate the risk for COVID-19 hospitalization, but studies are inconsistent on the relationship of SUD to COVID-19 mortality.
methodsVeterans Health Administration (VHA) patients treated in 2019 and evaluated in 2020 for COVID-19 (n=5,556,315), of whom 62,303 (1.1%) tested positive for COVID-19 (COVID-19+). Outcomes were COVID-19+ by 11/01/20, hospitalization, ICU admission, or death within 60 days of a positive test. Main predictors were any ICD-10-CM SUDs, with substance-specific SUDs (cannabis, cocaine, opioid, stimulant, sedative) explored individually. Logistic regression produced unadjusted and covariate-adjusted odds ratios (OR; aOR).
resultsAmong COVID-19+ patients, 19.25% were hospitalized, 7.71% admitted to ICU, and 5.84% died. In unadjusted models, any SUD and all substance-specific SUDs except cannabis use disorder were associated with COVID-19+(ORs=1.06-1.85); adjusted models produced similar results. Any SUD and all substance-specific SUDs were associated with hospitalization (aORs: 1.24-1.91). Any SUD, cocaine and opioid disorder were associated with ICU admission in unadjusted but not adjusted models. Any SUD, cannabis, cocaine, and stimulant disorders were inversely associated with mortality in unadjusted models (OR=0.27-0.46). After adjustment, associations with mortality were no longer significant. In ad hoc analyses, adjusted odds of mortality were lower among the 49.9% of COVID-19+ patients with SUD who had SUD treatment in 2019, but not among those without such treatment.
conclusionsIn VHA patients, SUDs are associated with COVID-19 hospitalization but not COVID-19 mortality. SUD treatment may provide closer monitoring of care, ensuring that these patients received needed medical attention, enabling them to ultimately survive serious illness.
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