Cutaneous lupus erythematosus. A study of 92 patients

Abstract

Introduction: lupus erythematosus (LE) is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease characterized by a wide spectrum of manifestations and a variable evolution.

Objectives: to describe in our population with diagnosis of cutaneous lupus erythematosus (CLE): age, sex, clinical forms, nonspecific cutaneous manifestations. Identify association with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) or other connective tissue diseases and treatments employed.

Design: retrospective descriptive study.

Materials and methods: we analyzed clinical records of patients between 16 and 68 years old from Latin America, with diagnosis of CLE treated in our dermatology department between 2007 and 2016.

Results: of 122 patients, 92 met the inclusion criteria. The mean age was 37 years, 90.2% (n = 83), female. Twenty nine percent (n = 27) had more than one type of CLE, a total of 125 lesions. The chronic form was 68.8% (n = 86) and within this, the discoid subtype was 60.4% (n = 52). The acute form was 21.6% (n=27) and the subacute form was 9.6% (n = 12).Of the 92 patients with CLE, 52.2% (n = 48) had diagnosis of SLE. Of these, 47.9% (n = 23) presented SLE before cutaneous compromise; 35.4% (n = 17) developed SLE within the first year CLE was diagnosed and 16.6% (n = 8) after. Another connective tissue disease was observed in 14 patients (no SLE).The most frequent nonspecific manifestations were photosensitivity, diffuse alopecia and Raynaud’s phenomenon.Treatment with antimalarials was the most used.

Conclusions: epidemiological studies in Argentina are rare. Most of our results agree with other series of studies. In this paper, we analyze an important number of patients, which allows us to increase the national casuistry and get closer to the reality of this pathology in our environment.