@article {Sattuie001814, author = {Sebastian Eduardo Sattui and Jean W Liew and Kevin Kennedy and Emily Sirotich and Michael Putman and Tarin T Moni and Akpabio Akpabio and Deshir{\'e} Alp{\'\i}zar-Rodr{\'\i}guez and Francis Berenbaum and Inita Bulina and Richard Conway and Aman Dev Singh and Eimear Duff and Karen L Durrant and Tamer A Gheita and Catherine L Hill and Richard A Howard and Bimba F Hoyer and Evelyn Hsieh and Lina El Kibbi and Adam Kilian and Alfred Hyoungju Kim and David F L Liew and Chieh Lo and Bruce Miller and Serena Mingolla and Michal Nudel and Candace A Palmerlee and Jasvinder A Singh and Namrata Singh and Manuel Francisco Ugarte-Gil and John Wallace and Kristen J Young and Suleman Bhana and Wendy Costello and Rebecca Grainger and Pedro M Machado and Philip C Robinson and Paul Sufka and Zachary S Wallace and Jinoos Yazdany and Carly Harrison and Maggie Larch{\'e} and Mitchell Levine and Gary Foster and Lehana Thabane and Lisa G Rider and Jonathan S Hausmann and Julia F Simard and Jeffrey A Sparks}, title = {Early experience of COVID-19 vaccination in adults with systemic rheumatic diseases: results from the COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance Vaccine Survey}, volume = {7}, number = {3}, elocation-id = {e001814}, year = {2021}, doi = {10.1136/rmdopen-2021-001814}, publisher = {BMJ Specialist Journals}, abstract = {Background We describe the early experiences of adults with systemic rheumatic disease who received the COVID-19 vaccine.Methods From 2 April to 30 April 2021, we conducted an online, international survey of adults with systemic rheumatic disease who received COVID-19 vaccination. We collected patient-reported data on clinician communication, beliefs and intent about discontinuing disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) around the time of vaccination, and patient-reported adverse events after vaccination.Results We analysed 2860 adults with systemic rheumatic diseases who received COVID-19 vaccination (mean age 55.3 years, 86.7\% female, 86.3\% white). Types of COVID-19 vaccines were Pfizer-BioNTech (53.2\%), Oxford/AstraZeneca (22.6\%), Moderna (21.3\%), Janssen/Johnson \& Johnson (1.7\%) and others (1.2\%). The most common rheumatic disease was rheumatoid arthritis (42.3\%), and 81.2\% of respondents were on a DMARD. The majority (81.9\%) reported communicating with clinicians about vaccination. Most (66.9\%) were willing to temporarily discontinue DMARDs to improve vaccine efficacy, although many (44.3\%) were concerned about rheumatic disease flares. After vaccination, the most reported patient-reported adverse events were fatigue/somnolence (33.4\%), headache (27.7\%), muscle/joint pains (22.8\%) and fever/chills (19.9\%). Rheumatic disease flares that required medication changes occurred in 4.6\%.Conclusion Among adults with systemic rheumatic disease who received COVID-19 vaccination, patient-reported adverse events were typical of those reported in the general population. Most patients were willing to temporarily discontinue DMARDs to improve vaccine efficacy. The relatively low frequency of rheumatic disease flare requiring medications was reassuring.Data are available on reasonable request. Researchers interested in performing additional analyses from survey data are invited to submit proposals through the COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance at rheum-covid.org. For approved projects, we will be able to provide summary tables and data analyses as requested. We do not currently have IRB approval to make the raw data available to other researchers.}, URL = {https://rmdopen.bmj.com/content/7/3/e001814}, eprint = {https://rmdopen.bmj.com/content/7/3/e001814.full.pdf}, journal = {RMD Open} }