engleski

Prevalence of cardiovascular complications in three age groups of patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE)

Introduction: Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune chronic generalized connective tissue disease. Vascular disease is the leading cause of death in patients with SLE. Vascular complications in patients with SLE can affect arteries of all sizes, but usually a small or medium-sized arteries are affected which leads from mild skin changes to severe organ failure, including renal failure, myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular accident and antiphospholipid syndrome. Methods: A retrospective analysis of data collected from 143 medical records of male (12) and female (131) SLE patients (<34 (N=50), 35-49 (N=57) and> 50 years of age (N=31)) and a cross-sectional study of microcirculatory flow measured using Laser Doppler Flowmetry (LDF) were conducted (N=4 per each age group). All data were analyzed in IBM SPSS Statistics 20. Results: Correlation between age when SLE was diagnosed and cardiovascular complications is significant at the risk level of 6% (r = 0.15, p = 0.055). Similar to previous findings, cardiovascular complications are more frequent in older patients. In contrast, there is no significant correlation between the duration of disease and the prevalence of complications and co-morbidities. In addition, there was no statistically significant difference in microcirculatory flow among the age groups. Discussion: Previous studies by LUMINA showed that patients diagnosed SLE diagnosed in adolescence, have a longer and more frequent periods of active disease, results more frequently inkidney disease. Our study did not show such results, possibly due to limitations which include non-systematised database and lack of information on the age when the disease occurred for all patients and the period of taking medications. Conclusion: In order to obtain valid results, further analysis should be carried out, that would include a larger number of laboratory results monitored over a longer period of time, the duration of the disease, and other parameters that could affect the cardiovascular system, including the incidence of cardiovascular complications.

systemic lupus erythematosus; cardiovascular complications

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