Caley, L., Flores, P., Gonçalves, A.M., Real, A., & Nepomuceno, J. (2023). Rapid Progressive Systemic Sclerosis Following mRNA COVID-19 Vaccination. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202310.0919.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Caley, L., André Real and Jorge Nepomuceno. 2023 "Rapid Progressive Systemic Sclerosis Following mRNA COVID-19 Vaccination" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202310.0919.v1
Abstract
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a respiratory tract infection caused by the new virus SARS-CoV-2. In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, there has been a rush to find preventative or curative treatment. This arrived with the appearance of the COVID-19 vaccine, months after the declaration of the pandemic. In the setting of global COVID-19 immunization, there have been reports of rare skin immune-mediated diseases (IMD) after COVID-19 vaccination, particularly systemic sclerosis. Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is the most reported new onset IMD following messenger RNA (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccination. The pathogenesis of SSc is not fully understood, and the diagnosis is based on clinical symptoms. We report a 54-year-old male, with no prior history of autoimmune disorder, with rapid and progressive skin thickening (Modified Rodnan skin score 30/51), weeks after his mRNA COVID-19 vaccination. Antinuclear antibodies (ANA) showed a strongly positive nuclear fine-speckled pattern, but no SSc autoantibodies were found. The patient was diagnosed with SSc based on the persistence of autoantibodies and the clinical criteria according to the 2013 American College of Rheumatology/European League Against Rheumatism classification. Due to the proximity of the two events, we hypothesized a cross-reaction between COVID-19 vaccination and, in genetically predisposed patients, an emergence of systemic sclerosis. Our case suggests a potential relationship between the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine and new-onset autoimmune diseases. Physicians should be aware of this possible association.
Keywords
COVID-19; mRNA-based vaccine; systemic sclerosis
Subject
Medicine and Pharmacology, Internal Medicine
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
