Active systemic lupus erythematosus patients more susceptible to infections: BMJ

China: Patients with freshly onset active systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) are more susceptible to serious infections, because of the underlying immunological disorder, says an article published in BMJ Lupus Science and Medicine.

SLE is a multi-systemic chronic autoimmune disease that has high morbidity and mortality. It has been well established that fatalities follow a bimodal pattern, with early deaths (1 year) often caused by active SLE or infection and late deaths mostly caused by atherosclerotic vascular disease. In this study, Haiting Wang and colleagues sought to describe severe infection episodes within the first year of follow-up and build a risk assessment tool for infection prediction using an observational inception cohort of Chinese patients with recently diagnosed SLE (3 months) from their center.

Between 1 January 2013 and 1 November 2020, a newly diagnosed (within 3 months) hospitalized Systemic Lupus Inception Cohort (hSLIC) was created. Every patient was monitored for at least a year or until they passed away. We gathered the patient's baseline characteristics. Major infection events—defined as microbiological/clinical-based diagnoses treated with intravenous antibiotics—were noted throughout follow-up. An additional training set and a testing set were created from the cohort.