Abstract: PLOS ONE RESEARCH ARTICLE Mortality and associated risk factors in patients hospitalized due to COVID-19 in a Peruvian reference hospital Alonso Soto ID1,2*, Dante M. Quiñones-Laveriano ID1, Johan Azañero ID2,3, Rafael Chumpitaz ID2, José Claros2, Lucia Salazar2, Oscar Rosales2, Liz Nuñez ID4, David Roca4, Andres Alcantara2 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 1 Instituto de Investigaciones en Ciencias Biomédicas (INICIB), Faculty of Medicine, Universidad Ricardo Palma, Lima, Peru, 2 Departament of Internal Medicine, Hospital Nacional Hipólito Unanue, Lima, Peru, 3 Universidad Cientı́fica del Sur, Lima, Peru, 4 Faculty of Medicine, Universidad Ricardo Palma, Lima, Peru * alonso.soto@urp.edu.pe Abstract Objectives OPEN ACCESS Citation: Soto A, Quiñones-Laveriano DM, Azañero J, Chumpitaz R, Claros J, Salazar L, et al. (2022) Mortality and associated risk factors in patients hospitalized due to COVID-19 in a Peruvian reference hospital. PLoS ONE 17(3): e0264789. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264789 Editor: Raffaele Serra, University Magna Graecia of Catanzaro, ITALY Received: October 20, 2021 Accepted: February 16, 2022 Published: March 2, 2022 Peer Review History: PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process; therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. The editorial history of this article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264789 Copyright: © 2022 Soto et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. To determine the risk factors for in-hospital mortality in patients with COVID-19 from a Peruvian national hospital. Methods Retrospective cohort study of medical records of patients with COVID-19 hospitalized at Hospital Nacional Hipólito Unanue (HNHU) during the months of April to August 2020. The dependent variable was in-hospital mortality. Independent variables included sociodemographic and clinical characteristics, physical examination findings, oxygen saturation (SaO2) at admission, treatment received during hospitalization and laboratory results at admission. A Cox regression model was used to evaluate the crude and adjusted hazard ratios for associated factors. Results We included 1418 patients. Median age was 58 years (IQR 47–68 years) and 944 (66.6%) were male. The median length of hospitalization was 7 (4–13) days, and the mortality rate was 46%. The most frequent comorbidities were type 2 diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and obesity. In the adjusted analysis, mortality was associated with age (HR 1.02; 95%CI 1.02– 1.03), history of surgery (HR 1.89; 95%CI 1.31–2.74), lower oxygen saturation at admission (HR 4.08; CI95% 2.72–8.05 for SaO2<70% compared to SaO2>94%), the presence of poor general condition (HR 1.81; 95% CI 1.29–2.53), altered state of consciousness (HR 1.58; 95%CI 1.18–2.11) and leukocyte levels (HR 1.01; 95%CI 1.00–1. 02). Treatment with ivermectin (HR 1.44; 95%CI 1.18–1.76) and azithromycin (HR 1.25; 95%CI 1.03–1.52) were associated with higher mortality. Treatment with corticosteroids at low to moderate doses was associated with lower..