COVID-19 and rheumatic autoimmune systemic diseases: report of a large Italian patients series
Clodoveo Ferri, Dilia Giuggioli, Vincenzo Raimondo, Massimo L’andolina, Antonio Tavoni, Riccardo Cecchetti, Serena Guiducci, Francesco Ursini, Maurizio Caminiti, Giuseppe Varcasia, Pietro Gigliotti, Roberta Pellegrini, Domenico Olivo, Michele Colaci, Giuseppe Murdaca, Raffaele Brittelli, Giuseppa Pagano Mariano, Amelia Spinella, Silvia Bellando-Randone, Vincenzo Aiello, Silvia Bilia, Daiana Giannini, Tommaso Ferrari, Rodolfo Caminiti, Veronica Brusi, Riccardo Meliconi, Poupak Fallahi, Alessandro Antonelli
Clinical Rheumatology, doi:10.1007/s10067-020-05334-7
Introduction Covid-19 infection poses a serious challenge for immune-compromised patients with inflammatory autoimmune systemic diseases. We investigated the clinical-epidemiological findings of 1641 autoimmune systemic disease Italian patients during the Covid-19 pandemic. Method This observational multicenter study included 1641 unselected patients with autoimmune systemic diseases from three Italian geographical areas with different prevalence of Covid-19 [high in north (Emilia Romagna), medium in central (Tuscany), and low in south (Calabria)] by means of telephone 6-week survey. Covid-19 was classified as (1) definite diagnosis of Covid-19 disease: presence of symptomatic Covid-19 infection, confirmed by positive oral/nasopharyngeal swabs; (2) highly suspected Covid-19 disease: presence of highly suggestive symptoms, in absence of a swab test. Results A significantly higher prevalence of patients with definite diagnosis of Covid-19 disease, or with highly suspected Covid-19 disease, or both the conditions together, was observed in the whole autoimmune systemic disease series, compared to "Italian general population" (p = .030, p = .001, p = .000, respectively); and for definite + highly suspected diagnosis of Covid-19 disease, in patients with autoimmune systemic diseases of the three regions (p = .000, for all comparisons with the respective regional general population). Moreover, significantly higher prevalence of definite + highly suspected diagnosis of Covid-19 disease was found either in patients with various "connective tissue diseases" compared to "inflammatory arthritis group" (p < .000), or in
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