Baricitinib Treatment of Coronavirus Disease 2019 Is Associated With a Reduction in Secondary Infections

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Daniel A. Sweeney, University of California San Diego; Bonifride Tuyishimire, Emmes Co LLC; Neera Ahuja, Stanford University; John H. Beigel, National Institutes of Health; Tatiana Beresnev, National Institutes of Health; Valeria Cantos Lucio, Emory University; Sheetal Kandiah, Emory University; Andre C. Kalil, University of Nebraska
• Language: English
• Date: 2023-05-03
• Publisher: OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC
• Publication Version: Final Published Version
• Copyright Statement: © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Infectious Diseases Society of America.
• License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International
• Final Published Version (URL): http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ofid/ofad205
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: OPEN FORUM INFECTIOUS DISEASES
• Volume: 10
• Issue: 5
• Start Page: ofad205
• End Page: ofad205
• Keywords: COVID-19; baricitinib; Science & Technology; Life Sciences & Biomedicine; Infectious Diseases; Immunology; secondary infections; Microbiology
• Research Categories: Health Sciences, Immunology; Biology, Microbiology

Abstract

We performed a secondary analysis of the National Institutes of Health-sponsored Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial (ACTT-2) randomized controlled trial and found that baricitinib was associated with a 50% reduction in secondary infections after controlling for baseline and postrandomization patient characteristics. This finding provides a novel mechanism of benefit for baricitinib and supports the safety profile of this immunomodulator for the treatment of coronavirus disease 2019.