Cardiovascular outcome in adult-onset Kawasaki disease

A Case of Adult-Onset Kawasaki Disease in an Adolescent Occurring during the COVID-19 Pandemic

We report the occurrence of the adult-onset type of Kawasaki disease (KD) with classic mucocutaneous manifestations of KD, cholestatic liver disease, multiple splenic infarcts, and residual multiple coronary artery dilatations in a previously healthy 14-year-old male adolescent 16 days after having received one dose of the BNT162b2 coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) mRNA vaccine. First, the report serves to highlight the diagnostic challenges of adult-onset KD often resulting in therapeutic delay and the frequently reported occurrence of persistent cardiovascular sequelae. Second, the report emphasizes that the temporal association of KD with the administration of a COVID-19 vaccine will likely be a frequent constellation in the near future, raising questions of a causative association. While there is currently no evidence of such an association in persons above 5 years of age, large-scale vaccination of children below 5 years of age will require close surveillance of vaccine-related adverse events.

Systematic review and meta-analysis of cardiovascular risk in rheumatological disease: Symptomatic and non-symptomatic events in rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus

Although each autoimmune disease is associated with specific tissue or organ damage, rheumatic diseases share a pro-inflammatory pattern that might increase cardiovascular risk. Retrospective and prospective studies on patients affected by systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) highlighted the concept of "accelerated atherosclerosis". Therefore, the purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis is the assessment of symptomatic or asymptomatic cardiovascular events among patients with rheumatic diseases as RA and SLE. The literature research obtained all manuscripts published in the English language between 2015 and 2019 for a total of 2355 manuscripts. After selection through inclusion and exclusion criteria, four articles examined cardiovascular risk in RA patients, 8 in SLE patients, and 2 in RA and SLE patients. Patients with SLE had a RR of 1.98 (95% CI: 1.18-3.31) of symptomatic cardiovascular events compared to the unexposed cohort. The meta-regression analysis showed that younger patient (age per year increase β = -0.12 95%CI: -0.20, -0.4), belonging to studies conducted in continent different from America (β = -0.89; -95% CI: 1.67, -0.10), after 2000 (β = 0.87; 95% CI: 0.09, 1.65) and with a higher quality score 0.80 (95% CI: 0.31, 1.29) had a higher risk of cardiovascular events. In patients with RA, the RR of cardiovascular events was 1.55 (95% CI: 1.18-2.02). These data are helpful to implement cardiovascular preventive strategies among people suffering from rheumatologic diseases to decrease the incidence of cardiovascular events. However, these implementation needs to build a higher network between rheumatologists and primary care healthcare workers to furnish the same information to patients and monitor their preventive practice compliance.