Associations of habitual glucosamine use with SARS-CoV-2 infection and hospital admission and death with COVID-19: Evidence from a large population based cohort study

ABSTRACT

ObjectivesTo assess the association of habitual glucosamine use with coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, hospital admission, or mortality with Corona Virus Disease-19 (COVID-19) in a large population based cohort. DesignPopulation based, prospective cohort study. SettingUK Biobank. ParticipantsParticipants with complete information on habitual glucosamine use and SARS-CoV-2 infection or COVID-19-related outcomes were included. These participants were registered from 2006 to 2010, followed up until 2022 and participated in SARS-CoV-2 tests between 2020 and 2022. Main outcome measuresSARS-CoV-2 infection, COVID-19 hospital admission, and COVID-19 mortality. ResultsAt baseline, 20,118 (15.9%) of the 126,518 participants reported as habitual glucosamine users. During the median follow-up 12.16 years, there were 53,682 cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection, 2,120 cases of COVID-19 hospital admission and 548 cases of COVID-19 mortality. The multivariate adjusted hazard ratios of habitual glucosamine users to non-users were 1.02 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.99 to 1.05) for SARS-CoV-2 infection, 0.73 (95% CI 0.63 to 0.85) for COVID-19 hospital admission, and 0.74 (95% CI 0.56 to 0.98) for COVID-19 mortality. The Cox proportional hazard analysis after propensity-score matching yielded consistent results. ConclusionsHabitual glucosamine use seems to be associated with a lower risk of hospital admission and mortality with COVID-19, but not the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection.