Exploring Rheumatology Complications of Emerging Viral infections & COVID-19

Announcer:
Welcome to the ACR Action Center on ReachMD. On this episode, we’re joined by Dr. Randy Cron, Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the Director of the Division of Pediatric Rheumatology at Children’s of Alabama. Dr. Cron is here to share highlights from a session at the 2021 American College of Rheumatology Convergence called “Rheumatology Complications of Emerging Viral Infections and SARS-CoV-2.” Here’s Dr. Cron now.

Dr. Cron:
Mariana Kaplan and I will be moderating this pre-meeting to the ACR Convergence that’s totally devoted to our current, ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, its rheumatologic complications, its implications for our own patients, the therapies that they’re on, and potentially the use of our own immunomodulatory agents and immunosuppressive agents in treating some of the severe COVID-19 patients as well as a fair amount of effort devoted to try and to understand the immunology of this disease.

There are a fair number of rheumatologic or autoimmune complications that have emerged during this pandemic and this includes everything from expression of autoantibodies to things like neutrophil traps or NETosis, and potentially triggers for our own autoimmune disorders. There’s so many people that have been infected with this that you can certainly see the gamut of possibilities when you have a worldwide pandemic with a virus like this.

Some of the key calls to action that hopefully we all gain from participating in this session is getting a better understanding of those who are at risk for severe COVID-19, whether it’s our patients or just patients or individuals in general. What therapeutics that our patients are on that also can be potential risks. But conversely, what can we offer as rheumatologists? So, in addition to what the intensivists and infectious disease and immunology folks have done, heroic work during this pandemic, , rheumatologists have a role here too because we’re familiar with some of the medications that may help some of the severe forms of this disorder.

In addition, particularly for the pediatricians and for people who take care of young adults, there’s this post-infectious entity of MIS-C or Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children, but it can be MIS-A for young adults, as well. But seems to be a post-infectious process that occurs approximately a month after infection that may affect up to one in a thousand or so children who have been infected by this virus and can be a quite severe illness in and of itself.

Announcer:
That was Dr. Randy Cron sharing highlights from the session focusing on rheumatology complications associated with emerging viral infections that was presented at the 2021 American College of Rheumatology Convergence. To access this and other episodes in our series, visit reachmd.com/ACR, where you can Be Part of the Knowledge. Thanks for listening.