• Umut Kalyoncu, Yavuz Pehlivan, Servet Akar, Timuçin Kaşifoğlu, Gezmiş Kimyon, Ömer Karadağ, Hüseyin Ediz Dalkılıç, Ali İhsan Ertenli, Levent Kılıç, Duygu Ersözlü, Cemal Bes, Hakan Emmungil, Rıdvan Mercan, Elif Durak Ediboğlu, Nilüfer Kanıtez, Emre Bilgin, Seda Çolak, Süleyman Serdar Koca, Emel Gönüllü, Orhan Küçükşahin, Nihan Coşkun, Burcu Yağız, and Sedat Kiraz.
• Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Rheumatology, Hacettepe University, Faculty of Medicine, Ankara, Turkey
• Turk J Med Sci. 2021 Aug 30; 51 (4): 1615-1623.

Background/AimTo evaluate treatment adherence and predictors of drug discontinuation among patients with inflammatory arthritis receiving bDMARDs within the first 100 days after the announcement of the COVID-19 pandemic.Materials And MethodsA total of 1871 patients recorded in TReasure registry for whom advanced therapy was prescribed for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) or spondyloarthritis (SpA) within the 3 months (6–9 months for rituximab) before the declaration of COVID-19 pandemic were evaluated, and 1394 (74.5%) responded to the phone survey. Patients’ data regarding demographic, clinical characteristics and disease activity before the pandemic were recorded. The patients were inquired about the diagnosis of COVID-19, the rate of continuation on bDMARDs, the reasons for treatment discontinuation, if any, and the current general disease activity (visual analog scale, [VAS]).ResultsA total of 1394 patients (493 RA [47.3% on anti-TNF] patients and 901 SpA [90.0% on anti-TNF] patients) were included in the study. Overall, 2.8% of the patients had symptoms suggesting COVID-19, and 2 (0.15%) patients had PCR-confirmed COVID-19. Overall, 18.1% of all patients (13.8% of the RA and 20.5% of the SpA; p = 0.003) discontinued their bDMARDs. In the SpA group, the patients who discontinued bDMARDs were younger (40 [21–73] vs. 44 years [20–79]; p = 0.005) and had higher general disease activity; however, no difference was relevant for RA patients.ConclusionAlthough the COVID-19 was quite uncommon in the first 100 days of the pandemic, nearly one-fifth of the patients discontinued bDMARDs within this period. The long-term effects of the pandemic should be monitored.This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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