Contribution of Biologic Response Modifiers to the Risk of Coccidioidomycosis Severity.

Background: The risk of coccidioidomycosis (CM) as a life-threatening respiratory illness or disseminated CM (DCM) increases as much as 150-fold in immunosuppressed patients. The safety of biologic response modifiers (BRMs) as treatment for patients with autoimmune disease (AI) in CM-endemic regions is not well defined. We sought to determine that risk in the Tucson and Phoenix areas.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective study reviewing demographics, Arizona residency length, clinical presentations, specific AI diagnoses, CM test results, and BRM treatments in electronic medical records of patients ≥18 years old with () codes for CM and AI from 1 October 2017 to 31 December 2019.

Results: We reviewed 944 charts with overlapping codes for CM and AI, of which 138 were confirmed to have both diagnoses. Male sex was associated with more CM ( = .003), and patients with African ancestry were 3 times more likely than those with European ancestry to develop DCM (< .001). Comparing CM/AI (n = 138) with CM/AI (n = 449) patients, there were no significant differences in CM clinical presentations. Patients receiving BRMs had 2.4 times more DCM compared to pulmonary CM (PCM).

Conclusions: AI does not increase the risk of any specific CM clinical presentation, and BRM treatment of most AI patients does not lead to severe CM. However, BRMs significantly increase the risk of DCM, and prospective studies are needed to identify the immunogenetic subset that permits BRM-associated DCM.