COVID-19 and Sarcoidosis: A two-way possible association

Hamidreza Bashiri, Mohammadreza Mirjalili, Fahimeh Rashidi Maybodi

Abstract


Immunological impairments such as lymphopenia in patients with sarcoidosis and their treatment by glucocorticoids and cytotoxic drugs may increase the risk of severe bacterial and viral infections, so these people may be more susceptible to COVID-19 as a disease with viral source. On the other hand, many previous studies pointed to viral trigger in sarcoidosis but no specific virus was mentioned. A recent French cross sectional study on 482 patients, suggests that daily active tobacco smokers have a lower risk of developing severe or symptomatic COVID-19 as compared to nonsmokers. It should be mentioned that our primary observations during the first COVID-19 outbreak (February-April 2020) on 206 COVID-19 patients admitted in intensive care units in Shahid Sadoughi hospital, Yazd, Iran, showed a possible negative association between smoking and coronavirus-2 infection. An observation that was addressed in the literature for sarcoidosis. Some previous studies mentioned that current smokers also have less probability for developing sarcoidosis. According to all these comparable features in patients with COVID-19 and sarcoidosis, may be one day in future, it will be reported that a sarcoidosis-like disease found in patients with COVID-9 history in 2020. Who knows?

 


Keywords


Coronovirus, COVID-19, sarcoidosis, association

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References


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