COVID-19 in systemic lupus erythematosus: A pooled analysis and systematic review of case reports and series

In the recent months, there have been several case reports and case series on COVID-19 in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus(SLE). We conducted a pooled analysis and systematic review to summarise the findings of these articles. Besides, we aimed to determine the predictors of severe COVID-19 infection in SLE by comparing the mild to moderate cases with the severe to critical ones.

All case reports and case series pertaining to COVID-19 in SLE were retrieved from Pubmed, Wiley Online Library, Springer Link, Science Direct and Web of Science databases using 'lupus', 'systemic lupus erythematosus', 'coronavirus', 'SARS-CoV-2', 'SLE' and "Covid-19" as keywords. The following data were extracted from the selected articles: country, age of the patient and the characteristics of SLE such as disease duration, organ or system involved, baseline medications and the severity of the COVID-19 infection. Data extracted from the articles were utilised to perform the pooled analysis.

A total of 24 articles with 48 patients met the eligibility criteria. The median age at diagnosis of COVID-19 infection was 41 years (IQR: 11-66 years). The median SLE disease duration prior to the diagnosis of COVID-19 was 9 years (IQR: 0-30 years). A total of 22 (45.83%) patients had severe to critical COVID-19. This pooled data did not demonstrate any difference in the baseline medications between the 2 groups. Patients with lupus nephritis were significantly more prone to develop severe to critical disease (p = 0 .036) with an odds ratio of 5.40 (95% confidence interval of 1.120-26.045).

We found that lupus nephritis was the only predictor of severe to critical COVID-19 in SLE.