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Dear colleagues,

I am delighted, as the Guest Editor, to personally invite you to submit a paper for our Special Issue on infectious diseases to be published in the journal Healthcare. If accepted, your paper will join other investigators, practitioner-scholars, and the theorists who have addressed some aspects of infectious diseases’ diagnosis, assessment, and treatment, including the epidemiological approaches to investigate the evolution of infectious diseases from endemics to pandemics. For the present Special Issue, we are recruiting colleagues like you who will be submitting papers based on original findings. However, other types of papers will be considered, such as targeted literature reviews, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and theoretical papers.

The aim of this Special Issue is to announce, recruit, and publish new papers on infectious diseases and the occurrence of endemics and pandemics that would be of special interest to readers of Healthcare. Thus, papers published in this Special Issue aim to significantly contribute to the literature focusing on a recurrent healthcare problem that affected the entire population, which deserves special attention from all people, mainly scientists and healthcare managers.

In this Special Issue, original research articles, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and theoretical and clinical intervention papers are welcome.

I look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Fernando Augusto Lima Marson
Guest Editor

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Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Healthcare is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

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16 pages, 720 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Demographic and Clinical Profile of Patients with Osteogenesis Imperfecta Hospitalized Due to Coronavirus Disease (COVID)-19: A Case Series of 13 Patients from Brazil

by Luana Lury Morikawa, Luiz Felipe Azevedo Marques, Adriele Evelyn Ferreira Silva, Patrícia Teixeira Costa, Lucas Silva Mello, Andrea de Melo Alexandre Fraga and Fernando Augusto Lima Marson

Healthcare 2025, 13(15), 1779; https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare13151779 - 23 Jul 2025

Viewed by 239

Abstract

Background: Osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) is a rare genetic connective tissue disorder characterized by bone fragility, most often caused by pathogenic variants in type I collagen genes. In this context, we aimed to describe the clinical and epidemiological characteristics of patients with OI who were hospitalized for coronavirus disease (COVID)-19 in Brazil between 2020 and 2024. Methods: We conducted a retrospective descriptive analysis using data from the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS, which stands for the Portuguese Sistema Único de Saúde) through the Open-Data-SUS platform. Patients with a confirmed diagnosis of OI and hospitalization due to COVID-19 were included. Descriptive statistical analysis was performed to evaluate demographic, clinical, and outcome-related variables. We included all hospitalized COVID-19 cases with a confirmed diagnosis of OI between 2020 and 2024. Results: Thirteen hospitalized patients with OI and COVID-19 were identified. Most were adults (9; 69.2%), male (7; 53.8%), self-identified as White (9; 69.2%), and all were residents of urban areas (13; 100.0%). The most frequent symptoms were fever (10; 76.9%), cough (9; 69.2%), oxygen desaturation (9; 69.2%), dyspnea (8; 61.5%), and respiratory distress (7; 53.8%). Two patients had heart disease, one had chronic lung disease, and one was obese. As for vaccination status, five patients (38.5%) had been vaccinated against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Four patients (30.8%) required admission to an intensive care unit (ICU), and six (46.2%) required noninvasive ventilatory support. Among those admitted to the ICU, only two required invasive mechanical ventilation. The clinical outcome was death in two cases (15.4%). Both patients were male, White, and had not been vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2. One was 47 years old, was not admitted to the ICU, but required noninvasive ventilation. Despite the underlying condition most patients had favorable outcomes, consistent with an international report. Conclusions: This is the first report to describe the clinical and epidemiological profile of patients with OI hospitalized for COVID-19 in Brazil, providing initial insights into how a rare bone disorder intersects with an acute respiratory infection. The generally favorable outcomes observed—despite the underlying skeletal fragility—suggest that individuals with OI are not necessarily at disproportionate risk of severe COVID-19, particularly when appropriately monitored. The occurrence of deaths only among unvaccinated patients underscores the critical role of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in this population. Although pharmacological treatment data were unavailable, the potential protective effects of bisphosphonates and vitamin D merit further exploration. These findings support the need for early preventive strategies, systematic vaccination efforts, and dedicated clinical protocols for rare disease populations during infectious disease outbreaks. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Epidemiological Approaches to Infectious Diseases: From Endemics to Pandemics)

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