Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Multiple reliable and valid disease activities indices exist and have been used successfully in longitudinal studies. However, the definition of flare, using these intruments, has not been universally decided or accepted. Because flare is one of the three major patterns of lupus activity, it will remain an important outcome measure in both longitudinal and clinical trial studies.
Petri et al. (Fri,) studied this question.