TY - JOUR T1 - Early experience of COVID-19 vaccination in adults with systemic rheumatic diseases: results from the COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance Vaccine Survey JF - RMD Open JO - RMD Open DO - 10.1136/rmdopen-2021-001814 VL - 7 IS - 3 SP - e001814 AU - Sebastian Eduardo Sattui AU - Jean W Liew AU - Kevin Kennedy AU - Emily Sirotich AU - Michael Putman AU - Tarin T Moni AU - Akpabio Akpabio AU - Deshiré Alpízar-Rodríguez AU - Francis Berenbaum AU - Inita Bulina AU - Richard Conway AU - Aman Dev Singh AU - Eimear Duff AU - Karen L Durrant AU - Tamer A Gheita AU - Catherine L Hill AU - Richard A Howard AU - Bimba F Hoyer AU - Evelyn Hsieh AU - Lina El Kibbi AU - Adam Kilian AU - Alfred Hyoungju Kim AU - David F L Liew AU - Chieh Lo AU - Bruce Miller AU - Serena Mingolla AU - Michal Nudel AU - Candace A Palmerlee AU - Jasvinder A Singh AU - Namrata Singh AU - Manuel Francisco Ugarte-Gil AU - John Wallace AU - Kristen J Young AU - Suleman Bhana AU - Wendy Costello AU - Rebecca Grainger AU - Pedro M Machado AU - Philip C Robinson AU - Paul Sufka AU - Zachary S Wallace AU - Jinoos Yazdany AU - Carly Harrison AU - Maggie Larché AU - Mitchell Levine AU - Gary Foster AU - Lehana Thabane AU - Lisa G Rider AU - Jonathan S Hausmann AU - Julia F Simard AU - Jeffrey A Sparks Y1 - 2021/09/01 UR - http://rmdopen.bmj.com/content/7/3/e001814.abstract N2 - 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. ER -