Rheumatological complications of Covid 19

Zacharias, Hannah; Dubey, Shirish; Koduri, Gouri; D'Cruz, David

INTRODUCTION: COVID-19 has caused unprecedented hardships in the 21st century with more than 150 million infections. Various immunological phenomena have been described during the course of the infection, and this infection has also triggered autoimmunity. Rheumatological illnesses have been described following resolution of the acute infection; hence we sought to conduct a review of the rheumatological complications of COVID-19. METHODS: We conducted a literature search for articles relating to sequelae of COVID-19 from Jan 2020 to 30th April 2021. RESULTS: We found a number of reports of inflammatory arthritis after SARS-CoV-2 infection. SLE and renal disease have been described, and vasculitis also appears to be a common complication. Rhabdomyolysis and myositis has also been reported in a number of patients. We also found some evidence of large vessel vasculitis in ‘long COVID’ patients. CONCLUSIONS: This review highlights a number of important complications such as inflammatory arthritis, lupus-like disease, myostis and vasculitis following SARS-CoV-2 infection.