Evaluation of Type I Interferon Treatment in Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients: A Retrospective Cohort Study

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to cause morbidity and mortality worldwide; therefore, effective treatments remain crucial to controlling it. As interferon-alpha (IFN-alpha) and -beta (beta) have been proposed as COVID-19 treatments, we sought to assess their effectiveness on respiratory, cardiovascular, neurological, and psychiatric signs and symptoms, as well as PASC and death, in hospitalized COVID-19 patients without multiple sclerosis (MS). Using a federated data research network (TriNetX), we performed a retrospective cohort study of hospitalized COVID-19 patients without MS who received IFN-alpha or -beta treatment, comparing them to a similar cohort who did not receive treatment. Following propensity-score matched analyses, we demonstrate that hospitalized COVID-19 patients who were treated with IFN-alpha or -beta had significantly higher odds of death. In contrast, there was no significant difference in any other outcomes between 1-30 days or 1 day to anytime afterward. Overall, hospitalized COVID-19 patients without MS who were treated with IFN-alpha or -beta had similar short- and long-term sequelae (except for mortality) as those who did not receive treatment. The potential benefits of utilizing IFN-alpha or -beta treatment as therapeutics remain to be realized, and our research highlights the need to explore repurposing drugs for COVID-19 using real-world evidence.