The risk for severe COVID 19 in patients with autoimmune and/or inflammatory diseases: First wave lessons

Data regarding the risk for severe COVID19 in patients with autoimmune or inflammatory diseases are scarce. To estimate the risk of those patients to develop a more severe COVID19 infection All active patients and those with dermatologic and/or rheumatologic autoimmune/inflammatory diseases were identified in a single tertiary center. The charts of those tested positive for COVID19 between 1 March 2020 and 31 May 2020 reviewed including demographics, co-morbidities, and medications. COVID19 outcome of those with dermatologic and/or rheumatologic autoimmune/inflammatory diseases were compared to COVID19 infected matched controls without an autoimmune/inflammatory background. Overall, 974 of 381 268 active patients were tested positive for COVID19, including 35 out of 13 225 with dermatologic and/or rheumatologic autoimmune/inflammatory diseases. No statistically significant difference in severity of COVID19 infection or mortality rate was found. The rate of asymptomatic, mild, moderate, severe/critical and fatal COVID19 infection was 11.4%, 37.1%, 22.8%, 11.4%, and 17.1%, respectively, for the patients with autoimmune diseases and 17.8%, 45.8%, 10.9%, 6.8%, and 18.4%, respectively for the controls. Patients with autoimmune/inflammatory diseases seem not to develop a more severe COVID19 infection than controls.