ASSOCIATION OF HYPERTENSION WITH ALL-CAUSE MORTALITY AMONG HOSPITALIZED PATIENTS WITH COVID-19

Objective: It is unclear to which extent the higher mortality associated with hypertension in the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is due to its increased prevalence among older patients or to speci fic mechanisms. The main objective of the study is to analyze whether HT represents an independent risk factor for death as a hard endpoint in patients hospitalized with SARS-CoV-2 in Spain Design and method: Cross-sectional, observational, retrospective multicenter study, analyzing 12226 patients who required hospital admission in 150 Spanish centers included in the nationwide SEMI-COVID-19 Network. We compared the clinical characteristics of survivors versus non-survivors Results: The mean age of the study population was 67.5 ± 16.1 years, 42.6% were women. Overall, 2630 (21.5%) subjects died. The most common comorbidity was hypertension (50.9%) followed by diabetes (19.1%), and atrial fibrillation (11.2%). Multivariate analysis showed that after adjusting for gender (males OR: 1.5, p = 0.0001), age tertiles (second and third tertiles, OR: 2.0 and 4.7, p = 0.0001), and Charlson Comorbidity Index scores (second and third tertiles OR: 4.7 and 8.1, p = 0.0001), hypertension was signi ficantly predictive of allcause mortality when this comorbidity was treated with angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs) (OR: 1.6, p = 0.002) or other than renin-angiotensinaldosterone blockers (OR: 1.3, p = 0.001) or angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs) (OR: 1.2, p = 0.035) Conclusions: The preexisting condition of hypertension had an independent prognostic value for all-cause mortality in patients with COVID-19 who required hospitalization. ARBs showed a lower risk of lethality in hypertensive patients than other antihypertensive drugs.