medwireNews: Cytokine inhibitor treatment for inflammatory arthritis and other immune-mediated diseases (IMDs) is associated with a decreased risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection, suggests research presented at the ACR Convergence 2020 virtual meeting.
The study included 534 patients from Germany with rheumatoid arthritis (24.3%), spondyloarthritis (21.9%), inflammatory bowel disease (33.0%), psoriasis (11.8%), or other IMDs who had been receiving stable cytokine inhibitor treatment for more than 3 months, along with 259 IMD patients who were not receiving such treatments, and 971 healthy controls. Tumor necrosis factor blockers were the most commonly used cytokine inhibitor (42.5%), followed by interleukin (IL)-23 inhibitors (15.9%) and IL-17 inhibitors (9.6%).
Georg Schett (Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany) and co-investigators reported in a poster that rates of COVID-19 infection – defined as a positive anti-SARS-CoV-2 immunoglobulin G antibody test – were significantly lower among IMD patients receiving cytokine inhibitors compared with healthy controls, at 0.75% versus 2.27% (rate ratio [RR]=0.32).
Conversely, the COVID-19 infection rate was not significantly different among IMD patients who were not taking cytokine inhibitors relative to healthy controls, at 3.09% versus 2.27%.
“These data support a pathogenic role of cytokines, targeted by treatment of [IMDs], in COVID-19 and clearly speaks against stopping cytokine inhibitor treatment in patients with [IMDs] during the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic,” concluded the researchers.
medwireNews is an independent medical news service provided by Springer Healthcare Ltd. © 2020 Springer Healthcare Ltd, part of the Springer Nature Group
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