Study Identifies Association With IL-18 Levels, Long COVID Risk In People With SARDs

HCPlive (11/15, Brooks) reported, “New research has found an association with IL-18 levels and risk of long COVID in people with systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases (SARDs) across vaccination strategies, viral variants, and multivariable analyses, supporting the theory that blunted immune responses may be a mechanism for long COVID in this population.” The researchers “found that IL-18 levels were lower among those with long COVID (199 units) compared to in those without long COVID (221 units; P = .001).” According to the findings presented at ACR Convergence 2024, regarding “specific SARDs and SARD characteristics, IL-18 levels were consistently lower in those with long COVID and inflammatory arthritis (P = .021), remission/low disease activity (P = .02), and moderate/high disease activity (P = .015).”