ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: We assessed the risk factors and outcome of COVID-19 in patients with autoimmune rheumatic diseases(AIRD) who contracted infection while on background treatment with tofacitinib. METHODS: This is a non-interventional, cross-sectional, questionnaire based telephonic study which included consecutive AIRD patients on tofacitinib co-treatment. Data related to the AIRD subset, disease modifying anti rheumatic drugs(DMARDs) including glucocorticoids and comorbidities, was collected from 7 rheumatology centers across Karnataka during the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic. The information about COVID-19 occurrence and COVID-19 vaccination was recorded. RESULTS: During the study period (Jun-July 2021), 335 AIRD patients (80.6% female) on treatment with tofacitinib were included. The mean duration of tofacitinib use was 3.4+/-3.1months. Thirty-six(10.75%) patients developed COVID-19. Diabetes mellitus (p = 0.04 (OR 2.60 (1.13-5.99)) was identified as a risk factor for COVID-19 in our cohort. Almost half of our cohort was COVID-19 vaccinated with at least one dose, with resultant decline in incidence of COVID-19(OR 0.15 (0.06-0.39) among the vaccinated. Recovery amongst COVID-19 infection group was 91.2%. CONCLUSIONS: The subset of AIRD patients who were on treatment with tofacitinib were found to have a higher rate of COVID-19 infection as compared to our KRACC cohort. Pre-existing comorbidity of diabetes mellitus was the significant risk factor in our cohort. This subset of the KRACC cohort shows RA patients had a lesser infection and PsA patients had a higher infection.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Acute onset polyarthritis is a common presentation in rheumatology outpatient consultations, which include both post-infectious arthritis and autoimmune rheumatic diseases (AIRDs). COVID pandemic has added to the list of infectious agents that could result in arthritis. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The retrospective observational study was conducted at a tertiary care centre. The study included patients who presented with clinical suspicion of post-infectious arthritis between July-September 2019 and 2020. The study was extended for another 2 months to include patients who presented between October-November 2020. The patients were categorized into post-viral arthritis, post-COVID arthritis, chikungunya arthritis and AIRDs. The demographics, comorbidities, clinical presentation, examination findings and laboratory parameters and the response to treatment for each participant were collected and assessed. RESULTS: In the year 2019 and 2020 (July-Sep), the corresponding number of patients analyzed were 20 and 33. The mean duration of presentation was 1.53 (±3.10) weeks. Chikungunya arthritis was noted in 10% of patients in 2019, while it was 15.15% in 2020. Other post-viral arthritis was identified in 65% and 66.67% of patients in 2019 and 2020 respectively. In the second part of the study, 65.68% of patients were classified as post-viral arthritis, including chikungunya arthritis, post-COVID arthritis and other post-viral arthritis. Around 27% were categorized as AIRDs. Rheumatoid factor negativity and anti-nuclear antibody negativity were found to be significant (P 0.0) in categorizing the patients into post-viral arthritis group, while presence of urinary symptoms (P 0.0) classified the patients into reactive arthritis. CONCLUSION: The study revealed that the presence of chikungunya arthritis across the two years was comparable. Post-COVID arthritis needs to be considered as a potential differential in post-infectious arthritis. There are no identifiable characteristics (clinical or a simple routine laboratory parameter) that could differentiate the causes of post-infectious arthritis from AIRDs.