PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - James T. Rosenbaum AU - Michael H. Weisman AU - Hedley Hamilton AU - Cassie Shafer AU - Elin Aslanyan AU - Richard A. Howard AU - Kimberly Ogle AU - John D. Reveille AU - Kevin L. Winthrop AU - Dongseok Choi TI - The Interplay between Covid-19 and Spondyloarthritis or Its Treatment AID - 10.3899/jrheum.210742 DP - 2021 Oct 01 TA - The Journal of Rheumatology PG - jrheum.210742 4099 - http://www.jrheum.org/content/early/2021/09/26/jrheum.210742.short 4100 - http://www.jrheum.org/content/early/2021/09/26/jrheum.210742.full AB - Objective The Covid-19 pandemic has created multiple uncertainties regarding rheumatic diseases or their treatment and susceptibility or severity of the viral disease. Methods To address these questions as they relate to spondyloarthritis, we created a longitudinal survey from April 10, 2020 to April 26, 2021. 4723 world-wide subjects with spondyloarthritis and 450 household contacts participated. 3064 of the respondents were from the US and 70.4% of them provided longitudinal data. To control for the duration of potential risk of Covid-19, the rate of contracting Covid-19 was normalized for person months of exposure. Results In an analysis of US subjects who provided longitudinal data, the incident rate ratio for the 159 (out of 2157) subjects who tested positive for Covid-19 was 1.16 compared to the US population as adjusted for age and sex (range 0.997 to 1.361, p=0.059). A paired evaluation using patients and household members did not show a statistically significant effect to indicate a predisposition to develop Covid-19 as a result of spondyloarthritis or its treatment. Our data failed to show that any class of medication commonly used to treat spondyloarthritis significantly affected the risk to develop Covid-19 or the severity of Covid-19. Conclusion These data do not exclude a small increased risk to develop Covid-19 as a result of spondyloarthritis, but the risk, if it exists, is low and not consistently demonstrated. The data should provide reassurance to patients and to rheumatologists about the risk that Covid-19 poses to patients with spondyloarthritis.