Clinical efficacy of nirmatrelvir and ritonavir combination for treating diabetic patients with COVID-19

The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical efficacy of a combination of nirmatrelvir and ritonavir (NMV-r) for treating COVID-19 in patients with diabetes mellitus (DM). This retrospective cohort study used the TriNetX research network to identify adult diabetic patients with COVID-19 between January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2022. Propensity score matching was used to match patients who received NMV-r (NMV-r group) with those who did not receive NMV-r (control group). The primary outcome was all-cause hospitalization or death during the 30-day follow-up period. Two cohorts comprising 13 822 patients with balanced baseline characteristics were created using propensity score matching. During the follow-up period, the NMV-r group had a lower risk of all-cause hospitalization or death than the control group (1.4% [n = 193] vs. 3.1% [n = 434]; hazard ratio [HR], 0.497; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.420-0.589). Compared with the control group, the NMV-r group also had a lower risk of all-cause hospitalization (HR, 0.606; 95% CI, 0.508-0.723) and all-cause mortality (HR, 0.076; 95% CI, 0.033-0.175). This lower risk was consistently observed in almost all subgroup analyses, which examined sex (male: 0.520 [0.401-0.675]; female: 0.586 [0.465-0.739]), age (age 18-64 years: 0.767 [0.601-0.980]; ≥65 years: 0.394 [0.308-0.505]), level of HbA1c (<7.5%: 0.490 [0.401-0.599]; ≥7.5%: 0.655 [0.441-0.972]), unvaccinated (0.466 [0.362-0.599]), type 1 DM (0.453 [0.286-0.718]) and type 2 DM (0.430 [0.361-0.511]). NMV-r can help reduce the risk of all-cause hospitalization or death in nonhospitalized patients with DM and COVID-19.