Prospective study into COVID-19-like symptoms in patients with and without immune-mediated inflammatory diseases or immunomodulating drugs

With the arrival of SARS-CoV-2, it was asked whether our patients with immune-mediated inflammatory disorders, or who had an organ transplantation (IMDT patients) and/or use immunosuppressive medication (imed) are more susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection and/or a severe COVID-19 disease course. In the earliest reports on COVID-19, such patients were rarely described. Most reports were retrospectively collected, in various case series or cohorts without a control group.1–3 The Infection and Immunomodulation Inventory Initiative cohort study was started 10 March 2020 to prospectively register self-reported periods of illness with COVID-19-like symptoms (CLS) (see questionnaire in online supplemental table 1) and compare these between IMIDT patients with and without imed and controls as selected from the hospital database of the Leiden University Medical Center in March 2020. Patients were defined as being in outpatient care at the outpatient clinic for rheumatology, gastroenterology, pulmonology and/or nephrology and having an autoinflammatory or autoimmune disease or having had a solid organ transplantation with or without imed (verified from the medical records after participant’s informed consent). Controls were persons who had visited these outpatient clinics in the previous …