Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and autoimmune rheumatic diseases: Outcomes and prospects

The pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), etiologically related to the SARS-CoV-2 virus (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2), has drawn attention to new clinical and fundamental problems in the immunopathology of human diseases associated with virus-induced autoimmunity and autoinflammation. The provision that “the experience gained in rheumatology in the process of studying the pathogenetic mechanisms and pharmacotherapy of immunoinflammatory rheumatic diseases as the most common and severe forms of autoimmune and autoinflammatory pathology in humans will be in demand for deciphering the nature of the pathological processes underlying COVID-19 and developing approaches to effective pharmacotherapy” was confirmed in numerous studies conducted over the next 3 years in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The main focus will be on a critical analysis of data regarding the role of autoimmune inflammation, which forms the basis of the pathogenesis of immune-mediated rheumatic diseases in the context of the immunopathology of COVID-19.