Objective

To describe vascular events during an 8 year follow-up in a multicentre SLE inception cohort and their attribution to atherosclerosis.

Methods

Clinical data including co-morbidities are recorded yearly. Vascular events are recorded and attributed to atherosclerosis or not. All events met standard clinical criteria. Factors associated with atherosclerotic vascular events were analysed using descriptive statistics, t-tests and χ2. Stepwise multivariate logistic regression was used to assess the association of factors with vascular events attributed to atherosclerosis.

Results

Since 2000, 1249 patients have been entered into the cohort. There have been 97 vascular events in 72 patients. These include: myocardial infarction (13), angina (15), congestive heart failure (24), peripheral vascular disease (8), transient ischemic attack (13), stroke (23), pacemaker insertion (1). Fifty of the events were attributed to active lupus, 31events in 22 patients were attributed to atherosclerosis, and 16 to other causes. Time from diagnosis to first atherosclerotic event was 2.0 ± 1.5 years. Compared to patients followed for 2 years without atherosclerosis events (615), at enrolment patients with AVE were more frequently Caucasian, male, older at diagnosis of SLE, obese, smokers, hypertensive and had a family history of coronary artery disease. On multivariate analysis only male gender and older age at diagnosis were associated factors.

Conclusion

In an inception cohort with SLE followed for up to 8 years there were 97 vascular events but only 31 were attributable to atherosclerosis. Patients with atherosclerotic events were more likely to be male and to be older at diagnosis of SLE.

Objectives

To determine the frequency, accrual, attribution and outcome of neuropsychiatric (NP) events and impact on quality of life over 3 years in a large inception cohort of SLE patients.

Methods

The study was conducted by the Systemic Lupus International Collaborating Clinics. Patients were enrolled within 15 months of SLE diagnosis. NP events were identified using the ACR case definitions and decision rules were derived to determine the proportion of NP disease attributable to SLE. The outcome of NP events was recorded and patient perceived impact determined by the SF-36.

Results

There were 1206 patients (89.6% female) with a mean (±SD) age of 34.5±13.2 years. The mean disease duration at enrollment was 5.4±4.2 months. Over a mean follow-up of 1.9±1.2 years 486/1206 (40.3%) patients had ≥1 NP events which were attributed to SLE in 13.0%–23.6% of patients using two a priori decision rules. The frequency of individual NP events varied from 47.1% (headache) to 0% (myasthenia gravis). The outcome was significantly better for those NP events attributed to SLE especially if they occurred within 1.5 years of the diagnosis of SLE. Patients with NP events, regardless of attribution, had significantly lower summary scores for both mental and physical health over the study.

Conclusions

NP events in SLE patients are variable in frequency, most commonly present early in the disease course and adversely impact patients’ quality of life over time. Events attributed to non-SLE causes are more common than those due to SLE, although the latter have a more favourable outcome.

Background

Optimal use of disease‐modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) in rheumatoid arthritis is vital if progression of disease is to be reduced. Methotrexate (MTX) and sulfasalazine (SASP) are widely used inexpensive DMARDs, recently often combined despite no firm evidence of benefit from previous studies.

Aim

To establish whether a combination of SASP and MTX is superior to either drug alone in patients with rheumatoid arthritis with a suboptimal response to 6 months of SASP.

Methods

A randomised controlled study of step‐up DMARD treatment in early rheumatoid arthritis. In phase I, 687 patients received SASP for 6 months. Those with a disease activity score (DAS) ⩾2.4 were offered additional treatment in phase II (SASP alone, MTX alone or a combination of the two). The primary outcome measure was change in DAS.

Results

At 6 months, 191 (28%) patients had a DAS <2.4, 123 (18%) were eligible but did not wish to enter phase II, 130 (19%) stopped SASP because of reversible adverse events and 165 (24%) entered phase II. DAS at 18 months was significantly lower in those who received combination treatment compared with those who received either SASP or MTX: monotherapy arms did not differ. Improvement in European League Against Rheumatism and American College of Rheumatology 20, 50 and 70 scores favoured combination therapy.

Conclusions

In this “true‐to‐life” study, an inexpensive combination of DMARDs proved more effective than monotherapy in patients with rheumatoid arthritis with a suboptimal response to SASP. There was no increase in toxicity. These results provide an evidence base for the use of this combination as a component of tight control strategies.

Objectives: To describe demographic factors, subtypes, and survival of patients with SLE who develop NHL.

Methods: A multi-site cohort of 9547 subjects with definite SLE was assembled. Subjects at each centre were linked to regional tumour registries to determine cancer cases occurring after SLE diagnosis. For the NHL cases ascertained, descriptive statistics were calculated, and NHL subtype frequency and median survival time of patients determined.

Results: 42 cases of NHL occurred in the patients with SLE during the 76 948 patient-years of observation. The median age of patients at NHL diagnosis was 57 years. Thirty six (86%) of the 42 patients developing NHL were women, reflecting the female predominance of the cohort. In the patients, aggressive histological subtypes appeared to predominate, with the most commonly identified NHL subtype being diffuse large B cell (11 out of 21 cases for which histological subtype was available). Twenty two of the patients had died a median of 1.2 years after lymphoma diagnosis.

Conclusions: These data suggest aggressive disease in patients with SLE who develop NHL. Continuing work should provide further insight into the patterns of presentation, prognosis, and aetiology of NHL in SLE.

Myelopathy is a well recognised but infrequent neurological manifestation of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). The case of a 27 year old woman with SLE of seven years' duration who developed a spastic paraparesis during her second pregnancy is reported. Magnetic resonance imaging did not show any intrinsic abnormality of the spinal cord. Anticardiolipin antibody was weakly positive and C4 was low. The patient responded dramatically to steroids.

Images