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Correspondence
Comment on Ye et al ‘Presence of respiratory failure of COVID-19 infection in rheumatism patients in Wuhan, China’
  1. Xiao-Huan Chen1,
  2. Chih-Jung Yeh2,
  3. Han-You Mo3,
  4. James Cheng Chung Wei4,5,6
  1. 1 Department of Rheumatology, Guilin Medical University, Guilin, Guangxi, China
  2. 2 Department of Public Health, Chung Shan Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan
  3. 3 Department of Rheumatology, the Affiliated Hospital of Guilin Medical University, Guilin, Guangxi, China
  4. 4 Institute of Medicine, Chung Shan Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan
  5. 5 Department of Allergy, Immunology & Rheumatology, Chung Shan Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan
  6. 6 Graduate Institute of Integrated Medicine, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan
  1. Correspondence to Dr Han-You Mo, Department of Rheumatology, the Affiliated Hospital of Guilin Medical University, Guilin, Guangxi, China; mohanyou{at}hotmail.com; Dr James Cheng Chung Wei, Institute of Medicine, College of medicine, Chung Shan Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan; jccwei{at}gmail.com

https://doi.org/10.1136/annrheumdis-2020-218451

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    We read with great interest the article by Ye et al,1 which reported the clinical features of COVID-19 in patients with rheumatic diseases, most notably that respiratory failure developed more commonly in patients with rheumatic disease infected with COVID-19 than those without rheumatic disease (38% vs 10%, p<0.001). The authors collected data from a total of 2326 patients with COVID-19 from 13 January to 15 March 2020, including 21 cases in combination with rheumatic disease, and conducted a retrospective case series study of their laboratory indices. However, some conclusions and findings in the study need to be further clarified.

    First, the sample size of patients with rheumatic disease infected with COVID-19 was only 21—too small to extrapolate results with statistical confidence. Rheumatic diseases often affect the lungs, which can cause further damage …

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors All authors contributed equally to the presented work.

    • Funding This work was supported by funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China Grants (81760298).

    • 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; internally peer reviewed.

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