Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) who also had Long COVID were found to have many symptoms of Long COVID prior to the development of a COVID infection, Kaleb Michaud, PhD, said during his presentation at the ACR Convergence on November 13.

Dr Michaud is a professor in the department of internal medicine in the division of rheumatology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska.

“The patients had increases in many variables associated with RA severity and psychosocial distress,” Dr Michaud added. “A Long COVID diagnosis may reflect pre-existing illness, which may not be possible to separate.”

For the research, the investigators pulled data from 667 patients from FORWARD, a National Databank for Rheumatic Diseases. Participants with physician-diagnosed RA and self-reported COVID infections completed comprehensive questionnaires with a mandatory question—"Have you ever been told by a health care provider that you have Long COVID?”

The questionnaire provided deeper insights into the patients’ socioeconomic status, treatments, symptoms, hospitalizations, and several patient-reported outcomes such as fatigue, pain, sleep problems, health satisfaction, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and fibromyalgia.

The findings revealed that patients with Long COVID were “older, less likely to be white, lower socioeconomic status, had more comorbidities, had worse RA patient-reported outcomes, more depression, and more likely to meet fibromyalgia 2016 criteria.”

Patients with Long COVID had more severe COVID infections with greater use of IV antibiotics, and hospitalization frequency for COVID.

Dr Michaud indicated that studies in future could help examine how well recent criteria identify Long COVID within the cohort, including those without COVID, and rates of Long COVID diagnosis termination.

Reference:
Michaud K. 1629: Persons with rheumatoid arthritis and Long COVID had worse pre-COVID RA symptoms and worse non-RA symptoms, as well as higher rates of fibromyalgia compared with COVID infected Long COVID negative. Presented at: American College of Rheumatology Convergence. November 13, 2023. San Diego.