Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): Rheumatological Prospects/Relevance.

Abstract

In December 2019, an outbreak of a novel infection under the working name 2019-nCoV was registered in Wuhan (the Hubei Province located in China's central region), which has quickly spread throughout almost the entire world and become pandemic. The World Health Organization (WHO) proposed a new name coronavirus disease (COVID-19) for this disease, whereas the International Committee on Virus Taxonomy renamed 2019-nCov as SARS-Cov-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2). The development of the COVID-19 pandemic is not only of great social importance, but also draws the attention of a medical community to the fundamentally new clinical and fundamental problems of the immunopathology of human diseases that are yet to be formulated. The unique experience gained in rheumatology from studies of the pathogenetic mechanisms and pharmacotherapy of immune-mediated inflammatory rheumatic diseases (IMIRDs) can be of great importance for deciphering the nature of the pathological processes that underlie the severe, potentially fatal complications of COVID-19, and may assist in improving their therapy. As for prospects in patients with IMIRDs, although the development of COVID-19 in the presence of IMIRDs has not yet fortunately been described, infection with SARS-CoV-2, like other viruses, can be assumed to cause an exacerbation of the pathological process, whereas severe immune system pathology and comorbidities can worsen the course of infection. Since, according to the current concepts, it is the «hyperimmune» response, and not just the effect only of the virus itself, that underlies lung damage and deaths from COVID-19, special attention is drawn to the effects of antirheumatic therapy that includes glucocorticoids, disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs), biological agents, and targeted DMARDs, which can have a multidirectional effect on the course of COVID-19. There are significant theoretical prerequisites for the repurposing of some drugs widely used in rheumatology for the treatment of COVID-19 and its complications. Consideration is given to the prospects of studying the immunopathology of COVID-19 and to the theoretical justifications for the use of antimalarial 4-aminoquinolines, anti-cytokine monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), and Janus kinase inhibitors for the prevention of complications and for the treatment of COVID-19.