Clinical subgroup analysis of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) (n = 281) and age and sex-matched population controls reveals that accelerated atherosclerosis is mainly confined to a subgroup of patients with SLE and nephritis. The patients with nephritis had significantly more carotid plaques than their respective controls (P = 0.008), which was not the case for the patients with antiphospholipid antibodies or SSA and/or SSB antigens. Plaques occurred twice as often in the patients with nephritis (23%) than in the patients without nephritis (11%, P = 0.038) or in controls (12%, P = 0.035).
References
Gustafsson, J. T. et al. Excess atherosclerosis in systemic lupus erythematosus, a matter of renal involvement: case control study of 281 SLE patients and 281 individually matched population controls. PLoS ONE http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0174572 (2017)
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McHugh, J. Atherosclerosis confined to patients with nephritis. Nat Rev Rheumatol 13, 322 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrrheum.2017.66
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrrheum.2017.66
