December 6, 2021
The timing of rituximab infusion or cumulative lifetime rituximab dose did not appear statistically significantly associated with risk for hospitalization for COVID-19 among patients with MS who received the drug before getting COVID-19.
However, researchers noted limited power of the study in which these results were reported.
“Rituximab therapy has been associated with more severe COVID-19 infection in persons with multiple sclerosis, although this finding was based on a small number of events,” Kyla A. McKay, PhD, of the department of clinical neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, and colleagues wrote in JAMA Network Open. “Further research is needed to evaluate the potential increased risk for severe disease. In this study, we examined the association between timing and dose of rituximab and hospitalization for COVID-19 across Sweden.”
The investigators conducted a nationwide nested case-control study with prospectively collected data from 3,391 individuals who participated in an observational drug trial cohort. Participants had received ongoing rituximab treatment and had COVID-19 onset as reported by a neurologist between March 1, 2020, and April 30, 2021. McKay and colleagues used logistic regression to relate the risk for hospitalization for COVID-19 to the time between the most recent rituximab infusion and the COVID-19 onset date and the total cumulative lifetime rituximab dose received. All participants with mild COVID-19 infection, which were those who did not require hospitalization, composed the reference cohort. The researchers adjusted models for age, sex and prepandemic Expanded Disability Status Scale score.
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