Exclusive: ACR Convergence 2024| Focus Rheums

An official publication of the ACR and the ARP serving rheumatologists and rheumatology professionals

Immunosuppressive Medicines Do Not Worsen COVID-19 Outcomes

Reuters Staff  |  

(Reuters)—Medications that suppress the immune system—necessary for many chronic diseases—do not worsen outcomes of COVID-19 cases, new data suggest.

Researchers looked back at 2,121 adults hospitalized for COVID-19 between March and August, including 108 who were taking immunosuppressive drugs (primarily prednisone, tacrolimus or mycophenolate mofetil).

ADVERTISEMENT
SCROLL TO CONTINUE

After accounting for patients’ general baseline health status, researchers found no significant differences between those who did or did not take immunosuppressive drugs in the risk of needing mechanical ventilation, the risk of dying, or the amount of time they were hospitalized.

“Our results contribute to a growing body of evidence that should provide reassurance to clinicians and patients using chronic immunosuppressive medicines,” the researchers wrote in Clinical Infectious Diseases.1

ADVERTISEMENT
SCROLL TO CONTINUE

Reference

  1. Andersen KM, Mehta HB, Palamuttam N, et al. Association between chronic use of immunosuppresive drugs and clinical outcomes from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) hospitalization: A retrospective cohort study in a large U.S. health system. Clin Infect Dis. 2021 Jan 7;ciaa1488. Online ahead of print.

Related Articles

    Vax Hesitancy? Myths & Facts for Patients

    Although more than 189,300,000 eligible Americans are fully vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 as of Oct. 18, 2021, vaccine hesitancy persists.1 The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), citing data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey collected between May 26 and June 7, 2021, reports that in some U.S. counties—particularly in the Southeast…

    Research Helps Explain Idiosyncrasies of COVID-19

    The Basic and Clinical Research Conference session on Rheumatology Complications of Emerging Viral Infections/SARS-CoV-2 presented findings from numerous studies that help explain some of the idiosyncrasies of COVID-19.

    Dari-designPie / shutterstock.com

    Months After COVID-19 Infection, Rheumatic-Like Symptoms Persist

    As more people get vaccinated for COVID-19, there’s hope that the long days of a pandemic, which has claimed more than 2.5 million lives globally and 500,000 in the U.S., will soon draw to a close and allow daily life to return to normal. However, for some people, this recovery may take longer, because the…