When the Covid epidemic started to unfold around the country, the researchers collaborated to form an international registry of patients who have Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) and COVID-19. The registry, Surveillance Epidemiology of Coronavirus Under Research Exclusion for Inflammatory Bowel Disease (SECURE-IBD), to date includes 528 patients from 33 countries.
“We established the registry to better characterize the clinical course of COVID-19 within the IBD patient population and evaluate the association between demographics, clinical characteristics, and IBD treatments on COVID-19 outcomes,” says study co-author, Erica Brenner, MD, Pediatric Gastroenterology Fellow, UNC Children’s Hospital.
The researchers conclude that increasing age, comorbidities, and corticosteroids are associated with severe COVID-19 among IBD patients, although a causal relationship cannot be definitively established. Notably, TNF antagonists do not appear to be associated with severe COVID-19.
“One of our main takeaways for the IBD patient population is that maintaining remission with steroid-sparing treatments will be important through this pandemic. Our finding that TNF antagonist therapy is not associated with severe COVID-19 is reassuring news in light of the large number of patients who require this therapy, currently the most commonly prescribed biologic therapy for IBD patients,” says study co-author, Ryan Ungaro, MD, Assistant Professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and a gastroenterologist with Mount Sinai Hospital’s Feinstein IBD Center.
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Original post https://alertarticles.info