Effect of ACEIs and AEBs (as a separate group) on the study outcomes
Overall, the effect of ACEIs and ARBs on seven COVID-19 related clinical outcomes (death, ICU admission, death/ICU admission, risk of acquiring COVID-19 infection, severe COVID-19 infection, hospitalisation, and acute SARS) were evaluated. Neither ACEIs nor ARBs had any significant impact on any of the seven studied outcomes (Figures 2-10,Table 1) except for hospitalisation whereby ACEIs use was associated with a significant increase in COVID-19 related hospitalisation (OR=1.18, 95%CI=1.04-1.35; I2 = 6.7%) (Figure 5 ;Table 1). These results were mostly consistent across all the sub-group analyses (Supplementary Files 6B&C, 7B&C, 8B&C; Table 2) except for the increasing effect of ACEIs on hospitalisation which was only observed among those studies which did not record the hypertension status of their patients (OR=1.23, 95%CI=1.10-1.41) (Supplementary Files 9B&C; Table 2)