{"doi":"10.1371/journal.pone.0259061","title":"Disulfiram use is associated with lower risk of COVID-19: A retrospective cohort study","abstract":"Effective, low-cost therapeutics are needed to prevent and treat COVID-19. Severe COVID-19 disease is linked to excessive inflammation. Disulfiram is an approved oral drug used to treat alcohol use disorder that is a potent anti-inflammatory agent and an inhibitor of the viral proteases. We investigated the potential effects of disulfiram on SARS-CoV-2 infection and disease severity in an observational study using a large database of clinical records from the national US Veterans Affairs healthcare system. A multivariable Cox regression adjusted for demographic information and diagnosis of alcohol use disorder revealed a reduced risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection with disulfiram use at a hazard ratio of 0.66 (34% lower risk, 95% confidence interval 24-43%). There were no COVID-19 related deaths among the 188 SARS-CoV-2 positive patients treated with disulfiram, in contrast to 5-6 statistically expected deaths based on the untreated population (P = 0.03). Our epidemiological results suggest that disulfiram may contribute to the reduced incidence and severity of COVID-19. These results support carefully planned clinical trials to assess the potential therapeutic effects of disulfiram in COVID-19.","journal":"PLoS ONE","year":2021,"id":156827,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":53,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9558,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":109451,"name":"Steven Bell","orcid":"0000-0001-6774-3149","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":13160,"name":"Ciyue Shen","orcid":"0000-0002-5416-2481","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":280993,"name":"Vinh Nguyen","orcid":"0000-0001-8886-0117","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":280990,"name":"Jennifer La","orcid":"0000-0003-2266-0221","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":364184,"name":"Maureen Dubreuil","orcid":"0000-0002-6253-1515","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":662274,"name":"Judith Strymish","orcid":"0000-0002-3711-0639","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":11348,"name":"Mary T. Brophy","orcid":"0000-0003-2314-4368","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":662275,"name":"Gautam Mehta","orcid":"0000-0002-5696-359X","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":228831,"name":"Hao Wu","orcid":"0000-0002-7281-8579","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":253642,"name":"Judy Lieberman","orcid":"0000-0002-6200-4715","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":56409,"name":"Nhan V. Do","orcid":"0000-0001-6868-7011","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":241966,"name":"Chris Sander","orcid":"0000-0001-6059-6270","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":56417,"name":"Nathanael R. Fillmore","orcid":"0000-0002-8058-3423","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":20,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:44:13.017332Z","pmid":"34710137","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}