Case of adult large vessel vasculitis after SARS-CoV-2 infection

We read with great interest the article ‘Characteristics associated with hospitalisation for COVID-19 in people with rheumatic disease: data from the COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance physician-reported registry’ by Gianfrancesco et al .1 This study showed that glucocorticoid exposure of ≥10 mg/day was associated with higher odds of hospitalisation and anti-TNF with a decreased odds of hospitalisation in patients with COVID-19 with rheumatic disease. Like this report, studies on the relationship between COVID-19 and rheumatic diseases are needed. Although several cases of vasculitis, such as large vessel vasculitis (LVV) and Kawasaki disease, have been reported among patients with COVID-19,2 3 there are no recorded cases of adult LVV developing after severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. We report a case of this development. A 71-year-old Japanese man was admitted to our hospital with complaints of fever and productive cough for 12 days. He was referred to our hospital after a chest X-ray at a private clinic revealed ground glass opacity (GGO) in bilateral lung fields. He had no history of vasculitis or arteriosclerosis. Two days after admission, PCR was positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA. …