Inflammatory arthritis needs infectious disease screening before starting a biologic agent, however, few data are known about migrant patients, who represent a peculiar population which requires a multidisciplinary approach among international health specialists and should also be considered by health authorities. For this reason, the Italian and Spanish Societies of Rheumatology (SIR and SER) and Tropical Medicine (SIMET and SEMTSI) promoted a multidisciplinary task force in order to produce specific recommendations about screening and advices to be considered in migrant patients with inflammatory arthritis candidate to receive biological therapy, according to their geographical origin.
The experts provided a prioritised list of research questions and the eligible spectrum of inflammatory arthritis, biologic drugs and infectious disease were defined in order to perform a systematic literature review. A search was made in Medline, Embase and Cochrane library, updated to March 2015. Ubiquitous infections and HBV, HCV, HIV and tuberculosis that are already considered in national and international recommendations, were not included. The strength of each recommendation was determined.
The task force members agreed on 7 overarching principles. The risk of reactivation of selected potentially latent infectious disease was addressed in migrants with inflammatory arthritis candidates for biologics was considered and 15 potentially relevant infections were identified.
Fifteen disease-specific recommendations were formulated on the basis of high level of agreement among the experts panel.