Maria Abreu, MD, on the Basics of COVID-19 in IBD

In this video Dr Abreu previews her talk for the AIBD 2020 virtual meeting on how COVID-19 is affecting patients with inflammatory bowel diseases and gastroenterology practice.

Maria Abreu, MD, is director of the of the Crohn's and Colitis Center and professor of medicine at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, everybody. My name is Maria Abreu. I'm at the University of Miami. It's a pleasure to be with you. I'm hoping that this little talk will convince you to listen to my presentation on the basics of COVID. Obviously, it's the reason we can't all be together in person, is this thing called COVID-19.

I'm going to share with the audience that listens in on what we know so far about COVID-19, but in particular, how it affects our patients with IBD. All of us, whether we're getting our news from CNN or the New York Times where I feel it has the best coverage, know a lot about COVID-19 already.

We're pretty much convinced that most of the transmission is going to be respiratory, that to a lesser extent, it's fecal-oral. It's allowed a resurgence of very interesting research, and a lot of collaborative research.

One such example of this collaboration in our world has been the secure registry that's told us that, for all intents and purposes, most of the medications that we use to treat IBD, thankfully, aren't worsening the outcomes of these patients, immunologically.

Indeed, based on some of the immunologic work done in COVID-19, you may already know that some of the anti-TNFs are being tested in clinical trials to see if this helps with the cytokine release syndrome that some of these patients get.

Therefore, I use that as a very compelling way to tell patients that not only are they safe in continuing these medications, but also, in fact, these are being repurposed, in some cases, for the treatment of patients that have COVID-19.

We're going to learn a lot more information as we go forward with respect to prospectively following our patients that have had COVID-19, and seeing whether some of the drugs that we're treating them with have allowed them to make a normal antibody or a T-cell immune response to the virus. Those are to be forthcoming.

Obviously, we're all very excited about the possibility of vaccines. Again, for all intents and purposes, all of the vaccines that will be available for COVID-19 should be safe in our patients. I hope you'll join me later, so that you can hear more about all these different aspects of COVID-19 and IBD.