{"doi":"10.1371/journal.pone.0327746","title":"Association between self-administrated prophylactics and SARS-CoV-2 infection among traditional market vendors from the Central Highlands of Peru: A nested case-control study","abstract":"Although COVID-19 is no longer a public health emergency of international concern, understanding behaviours such as self-medication remains relevant for informing future outbreak responses and improving public health preparedness. Despite its widespread use during the pandemic, research on medications preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection in healthy individuals is scarce. We investigated the association between self-administered prophylactics and SARS-CoV-2 infection during the third wave of the pandemic in Peru. A nested case-control study was carried out in a cohort of traditional market vendors in the Peruvian Central Highlands, enrolled in a health program. Cases (positive SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis) were matched with controls (negative) by age, sex, and market of origin. Conditional logistic regression models were fitted to evaluate the association between self-administered prophylactics and SARS-CoV-2 infection. As a result, 73 cases were matched with 176 controls. Acetylsalicylic acid consumption increased SARS-CoV-2 infection odds (adjusted Odds Ratio 2.34; 95% Confidence Interval 1.17-4.66). Conversely, vitamin C consumption reduced infection odds (adjusted Odds Ratio 0.44; 95% Confidence Interval 0.23-0.87). Finally, not having the COVID-19 booster increased infection odds (adjusted Odds Ratio 3.38; 95% Confidence Interval 1.43-7.95). In conclusion, our findings suggest that acetylsalicylic acid consumption increased the odds of SARS-CoV-2 infection, whereas vitamin C consumption decreased the infection odds during the third epidemic wave in Peru. Further research on the use of these medications is needed to establish a robust causal relationship with SARS-CoV-2 infection.","journal":"PLoS ONE","year":2025,"id":553486,"datarank":0.10397207708399181,"base_score":0.6931471805599453,"endowment":0.6931471805599453,"self_citation_contribution":0.10397207708399181,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.10397207708399181,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9548,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":954171,"name":"Ana Cecilia Ho-Palma","orcid":"0000-0002-3228-4074","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1075194,"name":"Cesar A. Valdivia-Carrera","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1450485,"name":"Astrid Munguia","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1450100,"name":"Christine Leyns","orcid":"0000-0003-0247-4368","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":478513,"name":"Javier Guitián","orcid":"0000-0003-0799-0476","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":739971,"name":"Eloy Gonzales-Gustavson","orcid":"0000-0001-7328-2983","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1433736,"name":"Daniel A. Andrade","orcid":"0000-0003-0679-7535","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":48,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:54:41.819682Z","pmid":"40644504","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":[]}