ArticleClinical pharmacology and therapeutics2021
DrugWAS: Drug-wide Association Studies for COVID-19 Drug Repurposing.
Article in Clinical pharmacology and therapeutics, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- The effect of polyunsaturated fatty acids on the severity and mortality of COVID patients: A systematic review.Life sciences · 2022Pooled it
- Machine Learning Estimation of Gestational Age at Delivery Using Linked Mother-Infant Electronic Health Records Across Two Health Systems.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Large-scale integration of omics and electronic health records to identify potential risk protein biomarkers and therapeutic drugs for cancer prevention.American journal of human genetics · 2026Article
- Leveraging undecided cases in chart-reviewed phenotypes to enhance EHR-based association studies.Journal of biomedical informatics · 2025Article
- Twenty-Five Years of Evolution and Hurdles in Electronic Health Records and Interoperability in Medical Research: Comprehensive Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Review
- Appropriate Allergic Rhinitis Medications Can Reduce Systemic Steroid Requirement and Prevent Rhinosinusitis.Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Article
- Prescribed Drug Use and Aneurysmal Subarachnoid Hemorrhage Incidence: A Drug-Wide Association Study.Neurology · 2024Article
- Identification of potential new COVID-19 treatments via RWD-driven drug repurposing.Scientific reports · 2023Observational
- Review
- Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Statin Use and Mortality, Intensive Care Unit Admission and Requirement for Mechanical Ventilation in COVID-19 Patients.Journal of clinical medicine · 2022Review
- How can natural language processing help model informed drug development?: a review.JAMIA open · 2022Review
- Computational drug repurposing based on electronic health records: a scoping review.NPJ digital medicine · 2022Article
- Mining Electronic Health Records for Drugs Associated With 28-day Mortality in COVID-19: Pharmacopoeia-wide Association Study (PharmWAS).JMIR medical informatics · 2022Article
- The Anti-Histamine Azelastine, Identified by Computational Drug Repurposing, Inhibits Infection by Major Variants of SARS-CoV-2 in Cell Cultures and Reconstituted Human Nasal Tissue.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2022Article
- The grand challenge of discovering new cardiovascular drugs.Frontiers in drug discovery · 2022Article
- DrugWAS: Drug-wide Association Studies for COVID-19 Drug Repurposing.Clinical pharmacology and therapeutics · 2021Article
- Tackling Immune Pathogenesis of COVID-19 through Molecular Pharmaceutics.Pharmaceutics · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
- Update of
Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
This study aimed to systematically investigate if any of the available drugs in the electronic health record (EHR) can be repurposed as potential treatment for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Based on a retrospective cohort analysis of EHR data, drug-wide association studies (DrugWAS) were performed on 9,748 patients with COVID-19 at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC). For each drug study, multivariable logistic regression with overlap weighting using propensity score was applied to estimate the effect of drug exposure on COVID-19 disease outcomes. Patient exposure to a drug between 3-months prior to the pandemic and the COVID-19 diagnosis was chosen as the exposure of interest. All-cause of death was selected as the primary outcome. Hospitalization, admission to the intensive care unit, and need for mechanical ventilation were identified as secondary outcomes. Overall, 17 drugs were significantly associated with decreased COVID-19 severity. Previous exposure to two types of 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccines, PCV13 (odds ratio (OR), 0.31, 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.12-0.81 and OR, 0.33, 95% CI, 0.15-0.73), diphtheria toxoid and tetanus toxoid vaccine (OR, 0.38, 95% CI, 0.15-0.93) were significantly associated with a decreased risk of death (primary outcome). Secondary analyses identified several other significant associations showing lower risk for COVID-19 outcomes: acellular pertussis vaccine, 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (PPSV23), flaxseed extract, ethinyl estradiol, estradiol, turmeric extract, ubidecarenone, azelastine, pseudoephedrine, dextromethorphan, omega-3 fatty acids, fluticasone, and ibuprofen. In conclusion, this cohort study leveraged EHR data to identify a list of drugs that could be repurposed to improve COVID-19 outcomes. Further randomized clinical trials are needed to investigate the efficacy of the proposed drugs.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.