You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 81, Issue 11
  • Response to: ‘Correspondence on ‘Lung involvement in macrophage activation syndrome and severe COVID-19: results from a cross-sectional study to assess clinical, laboratory and artificial intelligence–radiological differences’ by Ruscitti et al’ by Chen …

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Correspondence response
Response to: ‘Correspondence on ‘Lung involvement in macrophage activation syndrome and severe COVID-19: results from a cross-sectional study to assess clinical, laboratory and artificial intelligence–radiological differences’ by Ruscitti et al’ by Chen et al
  1. Piero Ruscitti1,
  2. Federico Bruno1,
  3. Onorina Berardicurti1,
  4. Chiara Acanfora1,
  5. Viktoriya Pavlych1,
  6. Pierpaolo Palumbo1,
  7. Alessandro Conforti1,
  8. Francesco Carubbi2,
  9. Ilenia Di Cola1,
  10. Paola Di Benedetto1,
  11. Paola Cipriani1,
  12. Davide Grassi3,
  13. Carlo Masciocchi1,
  14. Annamaria Iagnocco4,
  15. Antonio Barile1,
  16. Roberto Giacomelli1
  1. 1 Department of Clinical Sciences and Applied Biotechnology, University of L'Aquila, L'Aquila, Abruzzo, Italy
  2. 2 Department of Medicine, ASL 1 Avezzano Sulmona L'Aquila, L'Aquila, Abruzzo, Italy
  3. 3 Department of Clinical Medicine Life Health and Environmental Sciences, University of L'Aquila, L'Aquila, Abruzzo, Italy
  4. 4 Dipartimento Scienze Cliniche e Biologiche, Università degli Studi di Torino, Torino, Italy
  1. Correspondence to Dr Roberto Giacomelli, Department of Clinical Sciences and Applied Biotechnology, University of L'Aquila, L'Aquila 67100, Abruzzo, Italy; roberto.giacomelli{at}cc.univaq.it

https://doi.org/10.1136/annrheumdis-2020-218909

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.

    Dear Editor,

    We read with interest the correspondence by Chen et al 1 about our recent article on the comparison of clinical, laboratory and artificial intelligence–radiological findings in patients with lung involvement either from macrophage activation syndrome (MAS), a secondary form of haemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) or severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).2

    Age is one of the most common confounding factors in any observational study since it is associated with an increased risk of comorbidities, which may influence the outcome. In our study, the matching for age was not reliable because of higher prevalence of severe COVID-19 in elderly patients, who were admitted to intensive or subintensive care units of our hospital. These results mirror what was already observed in other observational studies,3 4 in which the incidence and severity of COVID-19 are generally higher in elderly patients due to higher frequency of comorbidities, increased frailty and immunosenescence.5 Conversely, MAS complicating adult-onset Still’s disease (AOSD), as patients assessed in our study, usually affects young adults.6 Considering the scientific debate behind our study,2 about the possibility that severe COVID-19 could be considered or not part of HLH spectrum, the age of occurrence may further differentiate the clinical pictures between these diseases.

    Furthermore, Chen et al 1 questioned the use of Yamaguchi criteria in classifying AOSD patients .7 Although …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Handling editor Josef S Smolen

    • PR and FB contributed equally.

    • AB and RG contributed equally.

    • Contributors All the authors meet all criteria for authorship in the ICMJE Recommendations, since all authors made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, and the acquisition and interpretation of data. All authors contributed to the critical review and revision of the manuscript and approved the final version. All the authors agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

    • 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, conduct, reporting or dissemination plans of this research.

    • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.

    Linked Articles