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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE
Myographic evidence of polymyositis and dermatomyositis in COVID-19 patients
Nareen Haikaz Hasrat1 ,
Haithem Jawad Kadhum1 ,
Zaineb Adil Yakob1 ,
Ali Raheem Hashim2 ,
Hassan Ala Farid3*
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1
Department of Physiology, College of Medicine, University of Basrah, Basrah,
Iraq
2
Department of Medicine, College of Medicine, University of Basrah, Basrah,
Iraq
3
Institute of Medical and Biomedical Education, St. George’s University of London, London,
United Kingdom
Submitted: 15 February 2023 | Accepted: 2 May 2023 | Published: 25 May 2023
© 2023 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract
Idiopathic inflammatory myopathies, commonly known as myositis, are a diverse group of disorders defined clinically by persistent muscle weakness and reduced muscle endurance, as well as inflammatory cell infiltrates inside the muscle tissue. Myositis as a complication of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been described in an increasing number of reports. An analytical and cross-sectional study was undertaken in Basrah to analyze nerve conduction studies (NCS) and electromyographic (EMG) data in a COVID-19-affected patient. During the evaluation of 2240 patients, three cases of myositis were reported among the COVID-19 population, two of them with new clinical and EMG evidence of inflammatory myositis after the onset of COVID-19 infection, and one patient had a history of polymyositis before the COVID-19 pandemic, but a relapse was triggered by COVID-19, resulting in respiratory failure and death. The study found that the prevalence of myositis among the COVID-19 population was equal to 0.22%, which is 44 times higher than the prevalence of myositis (0.005%) worldwide before the onset of COVID-19 (P < 0.001).
Keywords
Inflammatory myopathy
Polymyositis
Dermatomyositis
COVID-19
Funding
None.
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Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.