Clinical and Immunological Profile of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus: A 5-year Retrospective Analysis from Northeast India

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic inflammatory disease with a wide range of clinical manifestations having considerable variation in clinical features that are influenced by ethnic, sociocultural, and geographical factors. This disease primarily affects young women aged between 18 and 35 years. The aim of this present study was to delineate the clinical manifestations and immunological patterns of SLE patients from the Northeastern (NE) region of India. The study was carried out in a tertiary care hospital from January 2016 to January 2021. Adult patients of age >18 years fulfilling systemic lupus international collaborating clinic criteria (SLICC) for classification of SLE were included in this study. Immunology such as antinuclear antibodies (ANA) and double-stranded deoxyribonucleic acid (dsDNA) were also performed followed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Over a period of 5 years, 142 patients were recruited for the study, with an overall female-to-male ratio was 9.9:1, a median age at onset of 25 years (interquartile range age 21-32 years) and a mean disease duration was 15.25 months (range 2-60 months). Our study revealed that ANA was positive in 97.18% of patients while anti-dsDNA was positive in 78.68%, indicating that women from this region have higher positivity rates. Our findings support the notion that SLE is a multisystem disorder that predominantly affects young females, especially during the second and third decades of life. Hematological, mucocutaneous, and renal manifestations are common in our patients. Moreover, pulmonary, cardiovascular, and gastrointestinal (GI) manifestations were understudied in other cohorts, which is one of our study's strengths.