Search

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on new diagnoses of recurrent fevers and autoinflammatory diseases is largely unknown. The Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance (CARRA) PFAPA/AID Working Group aimed to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the number of pediatric patients evaluated for recurrent fevers and autoinflammatory diseases in North America. The absolute number of new outpatient visits and the proportion of these visits attributed to recurrent fever diagnoses during the pre-pandemic period (1 March 2019-29 February 2020) and the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic (1 March 2020-28 February 2021) were examined. Data were collected from 27 sites in the United States and Canada. Our results showed an increase in the absolute number of new visits for recurrent fever evaluations in 21 of 27 sites during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the pre-pandemic period. The increase was observed across different geographic regions in North America. Additionally, the proportion of new visits to these centers for recurrent fever in relation to all new patient evaluations was significantly higher during the first year of the pandemic, increasing from 7.8% before the pandemic to 10.9% during the pandemic year ( p  < 0.001). Our findings showed that the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with a higher number of evaluations by pediatric subspecialists for recurrent fevers. Further research is needed to understand the reasons behind these findings and to explore non-infectious triggers for recurrent fevers in children., Competing Interests: Authors (including those in consortium) and their disclosures (vast majority nonrelevant to this brief report) include Maryam Piram with Patent Valor, L’Oreal, Novartis, Pierre Fabre Dermatology, Lakshmi N Moorthy with Bristol-Myers Squibb, Brian E Nolan with Sobi, Eveline Wu with AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Janssen, Pharming Healthcare Inc, Felice C Adler-Shohet with BioNTech, Moderna, Seqirus, Tiphanie Vogel with Moderna, Novartis, Pfizer, Sobi, Smriti Mohan with CARRA, Fatma Dedeoglu with Novartis, Kathryn Edwards with NIH and CDC funding, Bionet, IBM, Sanofi, X-4 Pharma, Seqirus, Moderna, Pfizer, Merck, Roche, Novavax, Brighton Collaboration, and Grant Schulert with Novartis, SOBI. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (© 2023 Mansfield, Lapidus, Romero, Moorthy, Adler-Shohet, Hollander, Cherian, Twilt, Lionetti, Mohan, DeLaMora, Durrant, Muskardin, Correia Marques, Onel, Dedeoglu, Gutierrez, Schulert and the CARRA Autoinflammatory Network Consortium for the CARRA PFAPA/Autoinflamamtory Working Group.)