Article Text
Correspondence response
Rheumatic disease activity, glucocorticoid use and COVID-19. Response to: ‘Correspondence on ‘Characteristics associated with hospitalisation for COVID-19 in people with rheumatic disease: data from the COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance physician-reported registry’ by Gianfrancesco et al. Disease activity, rather than glucocorticoid therapy, may be associated with COVID-19 severity in patients with rheumatic musculoskeletal diseases’ by Giollo et al
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We thank Giollo and colleagues for their correspondence acknowledging the challenges of understanding those risk factors which contribute to severe outcomes in patients with underlying rheumatic musculoskeletal diseases (RMDs) who acquire the novel SARS-CoV‐2 infection.1 In their short case series, they highlight the balance and relative importance between disease activity and dose of glucocorticoid therapy, two factors which are highly linked within an individual. It is already known that both disease activity and glucocorticoid dose are independent risk factors for serious infection in patients with RMD, such as rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus,2–4 …