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

  1. Zhaleh Jamali
  2. Mohammad Hassan Emamian
  3. Hassan Hashemi
  4. Akbar Fotouh

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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.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.02.19.21252093: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: Everyone in the study participated willingly with written informed consent.
    IRB: Both studies have been approved by the ethics committee of Shahroud University of Medical Sciences.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    However, this study also had limitations. The absence of distinction between the method of opioid use and the type of addiction is one limitation. Also, the data of this study are limited to the age group of 50 to 74 years, while most opioid users are in the age group of 23 to 44 years (35, 36), which is another limitation of the current study. Although the overall sample size in this study is high, the number of participants with OUD was only 120, and this is another important limitation. The results of the power analysis showed that to identify a 3% difference, with this sample size in the two groups, the study power will be 40%, which is not a significant amount. Thus, further studies with higher sample sizes are suggested in the OUD group. In summary, people with OUD have a similar risk to the general population for developing COVID-19. Any protection role of OUD against SARS-CoV-2 infection should be discouraged.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.02.19.21252093v1 on medRxiv