TY - JOUR T1 - Response to ‘Correspondence on ‘Prevalence and clinical outcomes of COVID-19 in patients with autoimmune diseases: a systematic review and meta-analysis’’ by Gremese <em>et al</em> JF - Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases JO - Ann Rheum Dis DO - 10.1136/annrheumdis-2020-219337 SP - annrheumdis-2020-219337 AU - Shintaro Akiyama AU - Shadi Hamdeh AU - Dejan Micic AU - Atsushi Sakuraba Y1 - 2020/11/03 UR - http://ard.bmj.com/content/early/2020/11/03/annrheumdis-2020-219337.abstract N2 - We thank Gremese et al1 for their suggestion in our research article entitled ‘Prevalence and clinical outcomes of COVID-19 in patients with autoimmune diseases: a systematic review and meta-analysis’.2 Their recent work described that lung perfusion CT scan identified perfusion abnormalities such as hyperperfusion around areas of hypoperfusion (leukothrombosis) in patients with COVID-19-associated pneumonia, even without respiratory distress.3 They also demonstrated that in one of these patients, lung perfusion CT scan showed an improvement in parameters related to the perfusion abnormalities according to clinical improvement after starting treatments with enoxaparin and interleukin-6 inhibitor, without steroids.1 They suggested that COVID-19-associated pneumonia might … ER -