PLoS ONE (Jan 2012)

Flare, persistently active disease, and serologically active clinically quiescent disease in systemic lupus erythematosus: a 2-year follow-up study.

  • Fabrizio Conti,
  • Fulvia Ceccarelli,
  • Carlo Perricone,
  • Francesca Miranda,
  • Simona Truglia,
  • Laura Massaro,
  • Viviana Antonella Pacucci,
  • Virginia Conti,
  • Izabella Bartosiewicz,
  • Francesca Romana Spinelli,
  • Cristiano Alessandri,
  • Guido Valesini

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0045934
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 9
p. e45934

Abstract

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ObjectiveSeveral indices have been proposed to assess disease activity in patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE). Recent studies have showed a prevalence of flare between 28-35.3%, persistently active disease (PAD) between 46%-52% and serologically active clinically quiescent (SACQ) disease ranging from 6 to 15%. Our goal was to evaluate the flare, PAD and SACQ rate incidence in a cohort of SLE patients over a 2-year follow-up.MethodsWe evaluated 394 SLE patients. Flare was defined as an increase in SLEDAI-2K score of ≥4 from the previous visit; PAD was defined as a SLEDAI-2K score of ≥4, on >2 consecutive visits; SACQ was defined as at least a 2-year period without clinical activity and with persistent serologic activity.ResultsAmong the 95 patients eligible for the analysis in 2009, 7 (7.3%) had ≥1 flare episode, whereas 9 (9.4%) had PAD. Similarly, among the 118 patients selected for the analysis in 2010, 6 (5%) had ≥1 flare episode, whereas 16 (13.5%) had PAD. Only 1/45 patient (2.2%) showed SACQ during the follow-up.ConclusionWe showed a low incidence of flare, PAD and SACQ in Italian SLE patients compared with previous studies which could be partly explained by ethnic differences.