Frequency of fibromyalgia syndrome and anxiety post-corona virus disease-2019 (COVID-19) in patients attending the rheumatology clinic

Aim of the work: To screen for the new development of fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) and anxiety in rheumatic diseases (RDs) patients and control who recovered from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Patients and methods: The study included 200 RDs patients and 100 matched controls with no previous history of FMS and who recovered from COVID-19. The patients' RDs included rheumatoid arthritis (RA) (n = 50), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) (n = 50), juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) (n = 40) and spondyloarthritis (SpA) (n = 60). The fibromyalgia symptom scale (FS), fibromyalgia impact questionnaire (FIQ) and Hamilton Anxiety rating scale were assessed. Results: The mean age of patients was 35.9 +/- 8.5 years with female: male 2.6:1. Fibromyalgia and anxiety were significantly higher in cases than control (22.5 % vs 12 % and 27 % vs16 %, p = 0.002, p = 0.03 respec-tively). Hypertension, obesity, anxiety, severe COVID-19, frequency of SLE and SpA were significantly higher in patients with FMS compared to those without (31.1 % vs 11.6 %, 68.9 % vs 21.9 %, 84.4 % vs 10.3 %, 48.9 % vs 16.8 %, 31.1 % vs 23.2 % and 40 % vs 27.1; p = 0.002, p < 0.001, p < 0.001, p < 0.001, p = 0.014, p = 0.004 respectively).Severity of COVID-19, diabetes and anxiety were significant predictors of FMS(b = 1.1, p = 0.007; b = 3.03, p = 0.001 and b = 4.44, p < 0.001 respectively). Fibromyalgia increases with increase anxiety grade; the percentage of fibromyalgia was 4.7 %, 50 %, 90 % and 100 % among patients with no anxiety, mild, moderate, and severe anxiety respectively (p < 0.001). Conclusion: Fibromyalgia is common in RDs patients post-COVID-19. Diabetes, COVID-19 infection sever-ity and anxiety predict the risk of developing post-COVID-19 fibromyalgia. Post-COVID-19 fibromyalgia occurred more in hypertensive, obese, anxious and patients with severe COVID infection. (c) 2022 THE AUTHORS. Publishing services by ELSEVIER B.V. on behalf of The Egyptian Society of Rheu-matic Diseases. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).