Correspondence on '2022 American College of Rheumatology/European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology classification criteria for granulomatosis with polyangiitis' by Joanna C Robson et al and '2022 American College of Rheumatology/European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology classification criteria for microscopic polyangiitis'

Abstract

Sparks et al 1 are to be congratulated on an important and timely study. They found that the use of JAKi was associated with worse outcome of COVID-19 infection, and they interpret this as a harmful effect of the treatment in that particular setting. But this question deserves further consideration. Assuming that the observation is correct, what could the mechanism be? As the authors correctly point out, some JAKi’s did show benefits for patients with severe COVID-19 infection.2 3 We, therefore, propose an alternative explanation of the observed data.