Certain rheumatoid conditions and therapies are associated with higher risk for COVID-19, researchers say.

A study from Spain shows patients with spondyloarthritis, polymyalgia rheumatica or giant cell arteritis, and those on biologics and targeted-synthetic therapies, are at higher risk for hospital-diagnosed COVID-19 infection compared with the general population.

Data from more than 26,000 patients being treated at seven hospital rheumatology departments were checked for positive SARS-CoV-2 PCR tests and compared with a reference population of 2.9 million adults in the catchment area of the hospitals.

Overall, patients with any rheumatic disease had 1.32-fold greater odds of hospital-diagnosed COVID-19 than the reference population (0.76% vs 0.58%), the researchers report in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.