Journal
BRITISH JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRY
Volume 221, Issue 1, Pages 425-427Publisher
CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1192/bjp.2022.42
Keywords
COVID-19; lithium; valproate; bipolar disorder; psychopharmacology
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Funding
- National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre [BRC-1215-20005]
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This study suggests that patients with therapeutic levels of lithium have a lower risk of COVID-19 infection, regardless of underlying psychiatric diagnosis or vaccination status, based on electronic health records.
An antiviral effect of lithium has been proposed, but never investigated for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Using electronic health records of 26 554 patients with documented serum lithium levels during the pandemic, we show that the 6-month COVID-19 infection incidence was lower among matched patients with 'therapeutic' (0.50-1.00) versus 'subtherapeutic' (0.05-0.50) lithium levels (hazard ratio (HR) = 0.82, 95% CI 0.69-0.97, P = 0.017) and among patients with 'therapeutic' lithium levels versus matched patients using valproate (HR = 0.79, 95% CI 0.67-0.92, P = 0.0023). Lower rates of infection were observed for both new COVID-19 diagnoses and positive polymerase chain reaction tests, regardless of underlying psychiatric diagnosis and vaccination status.
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