Thickened carotid intima media thickness and carotid atherosclerosis among lupus nephritis patients: the role of traditional and lupus-specific factors

Abstract

More lupus specific factors were independently associated with thickened CIMT, suggesting that a multi-targeted approach of treatment addressing both the lupus and traditional cardiovascular risks are very important. Larger prospective studies of these special risk factors are indicated.

Atherosclerosis Biomarkers Among Egyptian Patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus: Population Based Study

“…Also, cIMT of patients with SLE did not correlate with the presence of antiphospholipid syndrome and/or the presence of anticardiolipin antibodies in the present study. Our results agree with Sazliyana who stated that no association was found between thickened cIMT and the presence of antiphospholipid syndrome and/or the presence of anticardiolipin antibodies [26].…”

“…Our results demonstrated no correlation between cIMT and SLEDAI. This agrees with Sazliyana who stated that there was no correlation between disease activity measured by SLEDAI and thickened cIMT, since atherosclerosis itself is the result of a chronic insult to the vessel wall, perhaps measuring disease activity at the current study time point is not a good indicator of the overall activity or severity of lupus activity throughout the course of the disease [26]. Our results disagree with Kisiel who stated that IMT was associated with SLEDAI [27].…”

Why are kids with lupus at an increased risk of cardiovascular disease?

“…In vitro plasmacytoid dendritic cells from SLE patients treated with hydroxychloroquine showed an impaired ability to produce interferon-α (IFN-α) and tumor necrosis factor-α when stimulated with TLR-9 and TLR-7 agonists [152]. In addition to its efficacy in preventing flares of SLE, there is epidemiological evidence [74,98,153] that it may be cardioprotective, possibly by improving the lipoprotein profile [154] and improving vessel elasticity [155]. A recent longitudinal study [156] of 24 patients with SLE treated with hydroxychloroquine showed a reduction in total cholesterol and LDL after 3 months of therapy.…”

“…Logistic regression analysis of 83 adults with SLE showed that waist circumference was an independent predictor of increased cIMT in a study by Sazliyana et al [74] and Yildiz et al [75] showed a significant correlation between arterial distensibility, as measured by PWV, and age, BMI, and waist-to-hip ratio. Our group showed a mean BMI centile similar to the control group with a high median reported physical activity score, suggesting that in pediatric practice there may be less scope for improvement [30].…”

The vascular phenotype of children with systemic lupus erythematosus

“…There is evidence to suggest that the change in phenotype may be due not only to disease-specific risk factors (such as severity and duration of disease [5][6][7], renal impairment [8][9][10] and medications [1,[11][12][13][14][15][16][17]) but also to a clustering of traditional risk factors (such as increasing age, obesity, smoking and reduced physical activity [15,[18][19][20]). …”