Comparing the severity and risk of developing COVID-19 in patients with inflammatory and non-inflammatory connective tissue diseases

Covid-19 disease was first reported in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. Inflammatory connective tissue diseases include rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, and non-inflammatory types include osteoarthritis and discopathy. This study was performed to compare the severity and risk of COVID-19 in patients with inflammatory and non-inflammatory connective tissue diseases.

This cross-sectional study was performed on patients with COVID-19 with positive PCR in a population of 2370 patients with inflammatory connective tissue (1030 cases) and non-inflammatory patients (1340 cases). Sampling was performed by convenience method. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS software version 16.

In this study, 190 patients (including 142 cases of inflammatory and 48 cases of non-inflammatory connective tissue disorders) with COVID-19. The risk of COVID-19 was estimated 8.01% in connective tissue cases, 13.8% in inflammatory connective tissue patients and 3.6% in cases with non-inflammatory types. Another finding of our study was a significant difference between the two groups of inflammatory and non-inflammatory connective tissue patients in terms of the severity of COVID-19, so that the severity of the infection was higher in the inflammatory group.

The results of the present study show that the risk of COVID-19 is 3.8 times higher in patients with inflammatory connective tissue disorders than in patients with non-inflammatory connective tissue disorders.