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  • Response to: ‘Correspondence to ‘Prevalence of hospital PCR-confirmed COVID-19 cases in patients with chronic inflammatory and autoimmune rheumatic diseases’’ by Wu et al

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Correspondence response
Response to: ‘Correspondence to ‘Prevalence of hospital PCR-confirmed COVID-19 cases in patients with chronic inflammatory and autoimmune rheumatic diseases’’ by Wu et al
  1. Jose L Pablos1,2,
  2. María Galindo1,
  3. Ricardo Blanco3,3,
  4. José M Alvaro-Gracia4
  1. 1 Servicio de Reumatología, Instituto de Investigación Hospital 12 de Octubre, Madrid, Spain
  2. 2 Department of Medicine, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
  3. 3 Rheumatology, Hospital Universitario Marqués de Valdecilla, IDIVAL, Santander, Cantabria, Spain
  4. 4 Servicio de Reumatología, Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón, Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Gregorio Marañón (IiSGM), Madrid, Spain
  1. Correspondence to Dr Jose L Pablos, Servicio de Reumatología, Instituto de Investigación Hospital 12 de Octubre, Madrid 28041, Spain; jlpablos{at}h12o.es

https://doi.org/10.1136/annrheumdis-2020-219049

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    We thank Wu et al for their interest in our study reporting on the prevalence of COVID-19 in patients with rheumatic diseases (RMD).1 Wu et al suggest that potential detection bias due to more frequent regular visits to hospitals in patients with RMD may explain the observed greater prevalence of hospital COVID-19 cases in these patients. However, this is highly unlikely since the identification of hospital PCR+ cases was performed in April 2020, still in the peak phase of COVID-19 pandemic in Spain, when the regular scheduled follow-up visits had been cancelled and restricted to urgent medical care. In addition, PCR test shortage resulted in the need to restrict testing to ‘COVID-19-likely’ symptomatic patients at emergency departments, making unlikely preferential testing of RMD or other specific patients. Nevertheless, we cannot exclude other biases such as …

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    Footnotes

    • Handling editor Josef S Smolen

    • Contributors All authors have contributed to writting this letter and have revised the final manuscript.

    • 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.

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