Tuberculosis infection in patients with rheumatic diseases under different treatments

Objective: To describe the clinical characteristics of the patients with rheumatic disease who develop tuberculosis(TB), this study investigated the clinical characteristics of patients with rheumatic diseases under different treatments. Method: We collected clinical data of patients diagnosed with rheumatic diseases complicated with TB at our hospital from January 2009 to October 2022. The patients were divided into three groups based on medication treatments: the biologic Disease Modifying anti-rheumatic drugs(bDMARDs) group, the noimmunotherapy group, and the conventional Synthetic Disease-Modifying Anti-Rheumatic Drugs (csDMARDs) group. A retrospective analysis was conducted on these three groups. Results: We found that patients using bDMARDs were less likely to develop cavities than the other two groups but were more likely to have extrapulmonary tuberculosis(EPTB). Additionally, the majority of patients experienced a time interval of 6 months or less from starting bDMARDs to the diagnosis of TB. The clinical characteristics of TB infection in patients with rheumatic diseases vary under different treatments. Discussion: Patients with rheumatic diseases exhibit distinct clinical characteristics under various treatment regimens, such as differences in the presentation and severity of TB infection. (c) 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).