You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Letter
COVID-19 infection after autologous stem cell transplantation for systemic sclerosis
  1. Joerg Christoph Henes1,
  2. Ioana Martac2,
  3. Wichard Vogel2,
  4. Claudia Lengerke2,
  5. Reinhild Klein2,
  6. Luca Hensen2,
  7. Ann-Christin Pecher1
  1. 1 Centre for Interdisciplinary Clinical Immunology, Rheumatology and Auto-inflammatory Diseases and Department of Internal Medicine II (Hematology, Oncology, Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology), University Hospital Tubingen, Tuebingen, Germany
  2. 2 Department of Internal Medicine II (Hematology, Oncology, Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology), University Hospital Tubingen, Tuebingen, Germany
  1. Correspondence to Professor Joerg Christoph Henes, Centre for Interdisciplinary Clinical Immunology, Rheumatology and Auto-inflammatory Diseases and Department of Internal Medicine II (Oncology, Haematology, Immunology and Rheumatology), University Hospital Tubingen, Tuebingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany; joerg.henes{at}med.uni-tuebingen.de

https://doi.org/10.1136/ard-2023-223915

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Introduction

    Patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc) have limited treatment options and the disease is associated with high disease related mortality.1 Autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) has been proven to be effective in selected progressive SSc patients.2–4 The goal of HSCT is a reset of the autoaggressive immune system by using immunoablative chemotherapies in combination with antibodies directed against lymphocytes before reinfusion of stem cells. Major concerns are infectious complications after HSCT. In 2020, COVID-19 led to highly increased death rates in the populations around the world and thus to major reservations with regards to HSCT in autoimmune diseases. In most of the centres, HSCT programmes for SSc were stopped and only restarted in special settings or after vaccination was available.5 This is the first single centre experience of COVID infections after HSCT for SSc. We report on six consecutive patients transplanted during the last year of which four developed a COVID-19 infection after HSCT. Mobilisation and conditioning were performed as described previously with cyclophosphamide (CYC) and antithymocyte globuline (ATG) or with reduced CYC, thiotepa and ATG …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Handling editor Josef S Smolen

    • Contributors JCH: planning, coordination, conduct and writing. IM: conducting laboratory tests for T-cell reaction. WV: reporting. CL: reporting. RK: conducting laboratory tests for autoantibodies and COVID antibody testing. LH: conducting laboratory tests for T-cell reaction. A-CP: Planning, coordination of laboratory tests and reporting.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.