Disease relapse rate in children with autoimmune rheumatic diseases after COVID-19 infection and vaccination.
Pediatr Rheumatol Online J
; 21(1): 46, 2023 May 19.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-2326350
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Paediatric patients with autoimmune rheumatic diseases (pARD) are often immunocompromised because of the disease and/or the therapy they receive. At the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic there was a great concern about the possibility of severe SARS-CoV-2 infection in these patients. The best method of protection is vaccination, so as soon as vaccine was licenced, we aimed to vaccinate them. Data on disease relapse rate after COVID-19 infection and vaccination are scarce, but they play important role in everyday clinical decisions.METHODS:
The aim of this study was to determine the relapse rate of autoimmune rheumatic disease (ARD) after COVID-19 infection and vaccination. Data on demographic, diagnosis, disease activity, therapy, clinical presentation of the infection and serology were collected from pARD who had COVID-19 and from pARD who were vaccinated against COVID-19, from March 2020 to April 2022. All vaccinated patients received two doses of the BNT162b2 BioNTech vaccine, on average, 3.7 (S.D.=1.4) weeks apart. Activity of the ARD was followed prospectively. Relapse was defined as a worsening of the ARD in a time frame of 8 weeks after infection or vaccination. For statistical analysis, Fisher's exact test and Mann-Whitney U test were used.RESULTS:
We collected data from 115 pARD, which we divided into two groups. We included 92 pARD after infection and 47 after vaccination, with 24 in both groups (they were infected before/after vaccination). In 92 pARD we registered 103 SARS-CoV-2 infections. Infection was asymptomatic in 14%, mild in 67% and moderate in 18%, 1% required hospitalization; 10% had a relapse of ARD after infection and 6% after vaccination. There was a trend towards higher disease relapse rate after infection compared to vaccination, but the difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.76). No statistically significant difference was detected in the relapse rate depending on the clinical presentation of the infection (p = 0.25) or the severity of the clinical presentation of COVID-19 between vaccinated and unvaccinated pARD (p = 0.31).CONCLUSIONS:
There is a trend towards a higher relapse rate in pARD after infection compared to vaccination and connection between the severity of COVID-19 and vaccination status is plausible. Our results were, however, not statistically significant.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Autoimmune Diseases
/
Rheumatic Diseases
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
/
Randomized controlled trials
Topics:
Vaccines
Limits:
Child
/
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
Pediatr Rheumatol Online J
Year:
2023
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
S12969-023-00829-4
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