Background/Purpose: SARS COV 2 pandemic has been an issue which has challenged the health care systems around the world. Rheumatology has been involved in two ways: on the one hand, due to the use, in its treatment, of specific agents usually indicated in rheumatologic conditions and, on the other hand, the fear that our patients could be at higher risk due to the use of immunosuppressive agents.

The main objective of our study was to analyze which features were associated with a serious course of the infection in a cohort of inflammatory rheumatologic patients and COVID-19 infection.

Methods: All patients with rheumatologic inflammatory conditions and COVID infection (confirmed by PCR of nasopharyngeal swab or serology) followed at three university referral centers from Basque Country were identified. Severe course was defined as those who required hospital admission or die. Comparisons of those with serious and non-serious disease course were performed using standard tests.

Results: Among 97 rheumatologic patients with COVID-19 infection, 37 (38%) presented with a severe course, 29 (29.9%) were admitted to hospital, 2 (2%) transferred to an intensive care unit and 12 (12.4%) died. Comparisons between those with severe and non-severe course can be seen in ‘Table 1’. Multivariate analysis of those variables found to be significant in the univariate analyses showed that only glucocorticoid (GC) use [0R 95%CI: 9.4 (2.3-39.0)] was associated with a severe course. Similar analyses also showed that death was associated with elder age, obesity and GC use.

Table 1

Conclusion: A severe course of COVID infection was observed in almost forty patients. GC were associated with either bad outcome and death whereas elder age and obesity were also associated with fatal outcome.

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ACR Meeting Abstracts - https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/differential-characteristics-in-inflammatory-rheumatologic-patients-with-severe-and-mild-covid-19-infection/