Clinical and immunological manifestations in SLE patients living in North Syria and comparison with Arab countries

Abstract EN

Objective : To analyze the characteristics of the main clinical and immunological manifestations of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) in 39 patients from Aleppo University Hospital and comparison with 4 other Arab SLE studies.

Methods : Patients were consecutively seen in our department between 2007 and 2010.

The clinical and serologic characteristics of all patients were consecutively collected in a protocol form.

Results : There were 32 females and 7 males with female to male ratio 4.5: 1, and a mean age of 25.7 years (range 14-54) years.

The most common disease manifestations were hematological abnormalities (79.5 %), cardiac manifestations (79.5 %), and general symptoms (74.4 %).

The most common hematological abnormalities is anemia (71.8 %).

The most common cardiac manifestations is valvular lesions (59 %) and the most common valvular lesions is mitral valve lesions (38.5 %).

The most common general symptoms is fever (69.2 %).

The prevalence of mucocutaneous manifestations was (67 %) ; with most common malar rash (51.1 %).

Neuropsychiatric manifestations were found in 33.3 % ; with most common epilepsy (15.4 %).

Lupus nephritis was found in 59 % with most common type in renal biopsy according to the WHO classification was class II (33.3 %).

Pulmonary manifestations were found in 53.8 % ; with most common pleural effusion (46.2 %).

Thrombotic lesions were found in 30.8 % ; with most common DVT (15.4 %).

Anti-nuclear antibodies were detected in 92.3 %, anti-double stranded DNA antibodies in 51.3 %, anti-Sm antibodies in 32.4 %,anti-Ro antibodies in 45.9 %.

Anti-cardiolipin IgM and Lupus anticoagulant were detected in 7.7 and 33.3 %, respectively.

Low C3 was observed in 65.6 %.

10.3 % of the patients died.

Conclusions : The comparison between our findings and 4 other Arab SLE groups revealed a higher incidence of males and lymphopenia, hemolytic anemia, low C3, pleural effusion, pericardial effusion and lupus nephritis, and a lower incidence of discoid rash, arthritis, alopecia, anti-DNA antibodies and anticardiolipin.