Incidence and clinical course of COVID-19 in patients with connective tissue diseases: a descriptive observational analysis

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 in December 2019 in China has very quickly become a global health emergency with almost two million of infected patients worldwide.[1] Along with the spread of the pandemic, there has been a growing concern about the management of fragile rheumatic patients, for whom there is still very little data available. In particular, subjects affected by connective tissue diseases (CTD) are known to have an increased infectious risk compared to the healthy population due to a general impairment of the immune system intrinsic to the autoimmune disease itself, the iatrogenic effect linked to the use of immunosuppressive drugs, and the high number of comorbidities that often complicate the clinical picture.[2,3]