key: cord-0697306-eum5knbj authors: Pi, Zixin; Chen, Pan; Zhan, Yi; Xiao, Rong title: Management Strategies of dermatomyositis during the Outbreak of 2019 Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) date: 2020-08-05 journal: Clin Dermatol DOI: 10.1016/j.clindermatol.2020.08.004 sha: 6df1798130419eac316278ce412f45db4eca9938 doc_id: 697306 cord_uid: eum5knbj In late 2019, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) broke out in Wuhan and then spread over China, which greatly impacted on the medical practices and healthcare systems. With most of the hospital's outpatient services closed, the routine clinical diagnosis and treatment for dermatomyositis (DM) patients has been disturbed. We conducted telephone follow-up on 52 patients to concern the changes in the condition and the continuation of drug therapy, to ensure the continuity, safety and effectiveness treatment of DM patients during COVID-19. Since December 2019, a viral pneumonia, COVID-19, broke out in Wuhan and quickly sweeping the world, which arousing widespread concern 1 . The pathogen of this viral pneumonia is 2019-nCoV which is highly infectious through respiratory droplets and close contact spread, susceptible groups are all groups 2 . To preventing the spread of COVID-19, people all stayed home, going out as little as possible. Dermatomyositis(DM) is a rare refractory autoimmune disease characterized by pathognomonic cutaneous manifestations and may or may not parallel myositis J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f combined with other systems involvement 3 . The patients with dermatomyositis have a high risk of developing interstitial lung disease (ILD) 4 5 . The latest research also revealed that three immunogenic linear epitopes with high sequence identity to SARS-CoV-2 proteins in patients with autoimmune dermatomyositis, which means latent exposure to 2019-nCoV might conduce to musculoskeletal autoimmune disease development 6 . Therefore, the patients with DM should be a priority group for COVID-19 prevention. We followed up 52 DM patients who were hospitalized in our hospital from January 2019 to January 2020 by telephone, of which 11 patients were lost to follow-up because the phone number wasn't available or the patient refused to answer and 7 patients have died. Among the 7 died patients, none of the patients came down with COVID-19. Two patients died of severe pneumonia and respiratory failure shortly after discharge from our hospital in 2019. Four patients died of nasopharyngeal carcinoma and one patient died of lung carcinoma. None of 34 followed-up patients came down with COVID-19. The results are shown in Table 1 and the following problems were found: (i)Although the vast majority of patients didn't interrupt their treatment, the therapeutic schedule was not properly guided and adjusted, which led to side effects such as increased liver enzymes and swollen feet. In the process of prevention and control of COVID-19, dermatomyositis patients as a group that needs special attention. The management of patients is a meaningful and challenging thing during the outbreak of COVID-19. J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f *most drugs were used in combination. A novel coronavirus outbreak of global health concern Early Transmission Dynamics in Wuhan, China, of Novel Coronavirus-Infected Pneumonia. The New England journal of medicine Clinical features and pathogenesis Interstitial Lung Disease in Polymyositis and Dermatomyositis Myositis as a manifestation of SARS-CoV-2 Annals of the rheumatic diseases Antibodies against immunogenic epitopes with high sequence identity to SARS-CoV-2 in patients with autoimmune dermatomyositis. Annals of the rheumatic diseases WhatsApp messenger as a teledermatology tool during This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of Central South University. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.