ABSTRACT
Objectives: To describe the prevalence of symptoms, hospitalization and seroconversion in patients belonging to a rheumatology department of a tertiary hospital. Methods: Observational, cross-sectional study conducted by phone interview. Rheumatic diseases included are shown. Data about symptoms, hospital admission, serology by ELISA (when disease duration was longer than15 days), diagnosis and baseline treatment, from March 2020 to February 2021 were collected. Results: Eighty-six patients with different rheumatic diseases and positive COVID-19 PCR were included (82.35%women). Mean age was 49.30 (16.16) years. 48.71%of the patients received biological therapy, JAK inhibitors or apremilast, with a median of 3.11 years (Q1 1,08;Q3 3,17). 34,18% of the patients received DMARDsor immunosuppressors, for a median of 5.09 years (Q1 12,25;Q3 11.09). The most frequent symptoms were asthenia (72.15%), headache (66.23%) and cough (59.49%). Nine patients (11.25%)were admitted to hospital, eight of them (10%) due to pneumonia. Three of them were admitted to intensive care unit and one died. Seroconversion occurred in 53.25%. Low IgG titers were present in 2.94% and IgM persisted positive in 56.25% of this group. In 6.45% the result was indeterminate. Conclusion: Hospitalization and mortality rates obtained were low and the most frequent symptoms were mild. Seroconversion occurred in more than 50% of patients and the result of 6.45% was indeterminate. It is important to highlight that since March 2020 to May 2020 IgG positive prevalence was 25%, while since September 2021 to February 2021, this prevalence increased to 57,45%. This difference is due to a modification of autoantibody detection technique since the summer 2020.