Ethical statement
Our study complies with the Declaration of Helsinki. The study protocol was approved by the Clinical Research Ethics Committee of the Hospital Marqués de Valdecilla (Santander, Spain) (Protocol number: 2020.151).
Competing interests
Disclosures that might be interpreted as constituting of possible conflict(s) of interest for the study:
Iván Ferraz-Amaro received grants/research supports from AbbVie, MSD, Janssen, and Roche and received consultation fees from company-sponsored speaker’s bureau associated with AbbVie, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi, Sobi, Amgen, Celgene, and MSD and received support for attending meetings and/or travel from AbbVie, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi, Sobi, Amgen, Celgene, and MSD.
Diana Prieto-Peña received research support from UCB Pharma, Roche, AbbVie, and Lilly outside the submitted work.
Miguel A. Gonzalez-Gay has received grants/research supports from AbbVie, MSD, Janssen, and Roche and had consultation fees/participation in company-sponsored speaker’s bureau from AbbVie, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi, Lilly, Celgene, and MSD and received support for attending meetings and/or travel from AbbVie, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi, Lilly, Celgene, and MSD.
R. Blanco received grants/research supports from AbbVie, MSD, and Roche, and had consultation fees/participation in company-sponsored speaker’s bureau from AbbVie, Pfizer, Roche, Bristol-Myers, Lilly, Janssen, and MSD and received support for attending meetings and/or travel from AbbVie, Pfizer, Roche, Bristol-Myers, Lilly, Janssen, and MSD.
The remaining authors declare to not have any conflict of interest regarding this work.
Data availability statement
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, R.Blanco, upon reasonable request.
Funding statement
No specific funding was received from any bodies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors to carry out the work described in this article.
Acknowledgments
We thank all the staff, physicians, nurses, and assistants of the Urology and Transplant Unit of University Hospital Marqués de Valdecilla for their interest and collaboration during all these years.
Contribution statement
- David Martínez-López has contributed to the manuscript by collecting patient data by reviewing medical records, statistical analysis, and drafting the manuscript including tables and figures.
- Iván Ferraz-Amaro has contributed to the manuscript by performing advanced statistical analysis, elaboration of tables and figures and reviewing the manuscript.
- Diana Prieto-Peña has contributed to the manuscript preparing the patient database and reviewing the article
- Lara Sánchez-Bilbao has contributed to the manuscript by collecting patient data by reviewing medical records.
- Alba Herrero-Morant has contributed to the manuscript by collecting patient data by reviewing medical records.
- Carmen Álvarez-Reguera has contributed to the manuscript by collecting patient data by reviewing medical records.
- Fabricio Benavides-Viilanueva has contributed to the manuscript by collecting patient data by reviewing medical records.
- Cristina Corrales-Selaya has contributed to the manuscript by collecting patient data by reviewing medical records.
- Martín Trigueros-Vázquez has contributed to the manuscript by collecting patient data by reviewing medical records.
- Miguel A. González-Gay has contributed to the manuscript reviewing the article and elaborating the cover letter.
- Ricardo Blanco has contributed to the manuscript providing the original idea, reviewing the article and elaborating tables and figures.
Patient and public involvement
Patients were first involved in this research at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many patients consulted us with doubts about the new virus, how their disease could affect their prognosis, and if they were at a greater risk of presenting a worse outcome due to the medications they needed to treat their rheumatological disease.
By then, no answers could be provided due to the lack of evidence. Therefore, we decided to launch this project to help the scientific community provide these answers.
Therefore, for the design of this study we first took into account the concerns of our patients, paying special attention to the mortality caused by the disease.
We have contact with various patient’s associations that will help us disseminate the results of this research. Also, some preliminary results have been announced in local newspapers.