Do ARBs and ACEis make COVID 19 infection worse?

A recent article in the BMJ raised concern that drugs that inhibit parts of the RAAS system might be harmful to patients infected with the new novel corona virus  known as SARS-COV2 while the disease it produces is named COVID 19.

 Coarse grain epidemiologic data from the Wuhan outbreak indicated that one of the risk factors for bad outcomes was hypertension.It was then hypothesized that the increased mortality might be due to the subset of hypertension patients who were taking ARBs or ACEi as those may increase levels of ACE2 which has been shown in animals and possibly humans and ACE2 is the receptor for both SARS-CoV and SARS-COv2. So with more ACE2 would the results be a higher viral load?

On the other hand in an animal model of SARS-COV ARMS seems to reduce lung injury.

All this and a detailed recitation of the RAAS system as it relates to Corona viral infection can be found in the link found at the end of this post as can the citation for the BMJ article..That link is an article by Dr. GM Kuster et al published March 20 2020 in the European Heart Journal which reaches this conclusion:

In conclusion, based on currently available data and in view of the overwhelming evidence of mortality reduction in cardiovascular disease, ACE-I and ARB therapy should be maintained or initiated in patients with heart failure, hypertension, or myocardial infarction according to current guidelines as tolerated, irrespective of SARS-CoV2. Withdrawal of RAAS inhibition or preemptive switch to alternate drugs at this point seems not advisable, since it might even increase cardiovascular mortality in critically ill COVID-19 patients.

This is in agreement with a recent statement made by ACC/AHA.See herehttps://www.acc.org/latest-in-cardiology/articles/2020/03/17/08/59/hfsa-acc-aha-statement-addresses-concerns-re-using-raas-antagonists-in-covid-19



https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/eurheartj/ehaa235/5810479?utm_medium=Email&utm_source=ESC&utm_campaign=ESC+-+Newstetter+-+week+13


addendum 4/620 clarification of the nomenclature for the virus and the disease caused by it