Clinical and demographic characteristics
Of the fifteen patients with PR-SLE, fourteen (93.3%) were women, with a median age of 49 years (48-60). All Act-SLE patients were women with a median age of 33 years (30-46) and 28 (97%) of the healthy subjects were women, median age 43 years (32-52). Patients with Act-SLE presented lymphopenia, with lower lymphocyte counts when compared with PR-SLE and healthy controls (1.12 x103 / µL [0.74 - 1.71] vs 1.67 x103 [1.23 - 2.76] vs 2.17 x103 [1.61 - 2.41] p = 0.030) The demographic and clinical characteristics at the time of recruitment are detailed in Table 1.
No differences were found between in the SLICC 2012 classification criteria at diagnosis between both groups of patients. At inclusion, disease duration in PR-SLE patients was 25.6 years (19.1 - 35.4) vs 9.25 (5.75 - 12.5) in Act-SLE patients (p <0.001). The median time in remission was 16.9 years (12.1 - 20.6). The PR-SLE group had a SLEDAI-2k score of 0 (0-2) versus 8 (6-16) in the Act-SLE group (p = 0.001). The clinical manifestations, activity indices and accumulated damage, and treatment of active patients are described in Table 2.