Clinical characteristics of chilean patients with rheumatic diseases and COVID-19: data from the COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance physician-reported registry

  1. Oriela Martínez Hernández
  2. Francisca Valenzuela
  3. Sebastian Ibañez

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Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-Cov-2), has registered more than 234 million confirmed cases and more than 4.7 million deaths throughout the world until October 2, 2021. During the last few months, a significant number of reports of COVID-19 in patients with rheumatic diseases have been published. In this study the objective is to report the clinical characteristics of Chilean patients with rheumatic diseases and COVID-19 reported in the “Global Rheumatology Alliance” (GRA) physician registration platform.

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  1. Version published to 10.46856/grp.12.et113
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.12.07.21267429: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsIRB: All analyzes were performed using the IBM SPSS Statistics version 24 program for Macintosh. Ethical Considerations: This study was approved by the Department of Academic Development and Research and the Scientific Ethics Committee of the “Clinica Alemana-Universidad del Desarrollo” Medicine Faculty.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    All analyzes were performed using the IBM SPSS Statistics version 24 program for Macintosh. Ethical Considerations: This study was approved by the Department of Academic Development and Research and the Scientific Ethics Committee of the “Clinica Alemana-Universidad del Desarrollo” Medicine Faculty.
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    This study had some limitations, such as the difficulty in collecting data, due to medical exhaustion, the increase in the care burden in health centers, constant changes in the treatment paradigm, therefore, the number of patients included is low compared to those affected by COVID-19 in Chile. Therefore, we did not carry out other association analyzes, as they would not reflect the reality of what happened. It is evident that the median of symptoms is higher than that reported in other studies, this may be because the patients with more days of symptoms were those who attended health centers and were hospitalized. In Chilean rheumatic patients, COVID-19 symptoms were the classic symptoms described for the disease, a low percentage manifested arthralgia, and activation of the rheumatic disease was not reported. Less use of corticosteroids and greater use of biological DMARDS are evidenced in rheumatic patients from the rest of the world compared to Chilean patients, possibly related to accessibility given by economic factors and health policies of each region. Regarding the specific treatment for COVID 19, some patients were treated with therapies that were initially believed to work, but later evidence showed that they did not, such as hydroxychloroquine or azithromycin. Only one patient received tocilizumab, probably because of the time of registration (early in the pandemic). It is not mentioned whether the patients were vaccinated because when the data collection began, ...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No funding statement was detected.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.12.07.21267429v1 on medRxiv