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Background and aim of the work: COVID-19 has multiple challenges among risky cases like rheumatoid arthritis patients. So, this study was done to look for COVID-19 in patients with rheumatoid arthritis and compare the severity and outcome of COVID-19 in rheumatoid arthritis patients to those in other groups. Patients and Methods: the prospective comparative study included 146 randomly selected patients attending Zagazig University Hospital in Egypt ,who were treated by the Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population protocol for COVID-19, and the disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs)who fulfilled the selection criteria to be recruited into three groups: rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients; rheumatoid arthritis with COVID-19 patients (RA-COVID); and a COVID-19 (COVID-19) group. Results: the mean age of the studied group was 50 years old. The three studied groups showed no statistically significant difference (p > 0.05) as regards age, sex, level of education, and marital status. But there was a statistically significant difference between groups regarding occupation and special habits in the form of hashish smoking. There was no marked difference in COVID-19 symptoms between group II and group III. The mean of the Modified Health Assessment Questionnaire (MHAQ) was 5.5 in RA group versus 8 in RA-COVID-19 group ,with statistically significant difference between group I and II as regard DAS28. The duration from being diagnosed with COVID-19 till recovery was significantly higher in RA-COVID-19 cases compared to COVID-19. RA-COVI-19 group did tend toward higher hospital admission rates (OR 0.81; 95% CI 0.35-0.88; p = 0.03). Conclusion: COVID-19 is accompanied by non-significant worsening of symptoms in RA patients on DMARDs, except the admission rates. More research into expanding cases is required .
Rabia et al. (Thu,) studied this question.