Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on patients with large-vessel vasculitis in Italy: a monocentric survey

COVID-19 in systemic lupus erythematosus: Data from a survey on 417 patients

“…Furthermore, the inverse association between family members/cohabitants' compliance to behavioural preventive measures and COVID-19, highlights the importance of containment policies for the safety of patients with chronic illnesses. This consideration is in fact consistent with general preliminary data on patients with rheumatic diseases from the Lombardy region [44,45]. Amongst SLE-comorbidities we found a high prevalence of hypertension, which was associated with cCOVID-19 as previously reported.…”

COVID-19 in Italian patients with rheumatic autoimmune systemic diseases

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] Overall, the observed prevalence of symptomatic COVID-19, usually as mild-moderate disease, in patients with chronic arthritis was comparable to that found in the general population, while worse outcomes represented almost rare events. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] Conversely, increased percentages of symptomatic COVID-19 were observed in patient cohorts with connective tissue diseases, especially systemic lupus or systemic vasculitis. 6 7 Of note, in ASD complicated by COVID-19, the baseline use of immune modifiers, namely, conventional synthetic (csDMARD), biological (bDMARD) and targeted synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (tsDMARD), was not associated with worse COVID-19 disease outcomes.…”

“…We followed with great interest the numerous reports published by the Annals [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] as regards the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on different rheumatic autoimmune systemic diseases (ASD), including the survey study by Costa et al 9 that underlined the usefulness of telerheumatology in the management of patients with psoriatic arthritis in COVID-19 era. On the same topic, the world literature encompasses a large number of anecdotal observations, cohort studies and telephone surveys.…”

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] Given the heterogeneous distribution of pandemic infection within the same country, we investigated the impact of COVID-19 in ASD patients' populations from three distinct regions of Italy (northern, Emilia Romagna; central, Tuscany; and southern, Calabria), characterised by different spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, prevalent in northern Italy with a marked gradient north-south. 16 Our 6-week multicentre telephone survey of 1641 unselected patients with ASD confirmed the quite benign clinical course of COVID-19 in ASD, along with the safety of baseline use of either bDMARD or tsDMARD [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] ; however, the survey revealed a significantly higher prevalence of (1) either definite COVID-19 (always confirmed by positive oral/nasopharyngeal swabs at PCR testing) or highly suspected COVID-19 (presence of fever and/or known contact with infected subject, and at least 4 out of 12 typical signs/symptoms of COVID-19) in patients with ASD compared with the Italian, or regional, general population; (2) definite COVID-19 plus highly suspected COVID-19 in connective tissue diseases (CTD)/vasculitis (703 patients) compared with the subgroup of chronic arthritis (938 patients with rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis or ankylosing spondylitis); and (3) definite COVID-19 plus highly suspected COVID-19 in ASD patients without ongoing csDMARD. 16 Although a number of issues still remain to be better investigated, we can draw some provisional considerations based on the whole of currently available data: ► The actual prevalence of COVID-19 in patients with ASD might be underestimated, possibly due to concurrent factors, mainly the high rate of mild COVID-19 variants, the frequent clinical overl...…”

COVID-19 in Italian Sjögren's syndrome patients: a monocentric study

“…Moreover, none of them was treated with more than 10 mg/day glucocorticoids, which is known to be associated with a higher odds of hospitalization for COVID-19 [8]. On the other hands, other studies do not seem to suggest an increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection for patients with inflammatory rheumatic disease nor a worse outcome of the associated disease [5,9,10]. In conclusion, it is likely that the awareness of having a chronic disease and the compliance with prevention rules, have played a role in limiting the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in this cohort of Italian patients with primary SS who have maintained an acceptable state of health during the lockdown period.…”