Initial Presentation of SLE among the Different South African Ethnic Groups
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54361/LJM17-2.13Keywords:
SLE, Ethnic Groups, South AfricanAbstract
Background: Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic, immune-mediated, inflammatory multi-organ disease. It is characterized by a variety of clinical features including abnormalities of the joints, skin, kidneys, lungs, heart, blood and brain. In addition to gender, genetic, environmental, hormonal and chemical factors appear to play a role in disease activity. Previous studies in South Africa have shown an increasing trend of new diagnoses of SLE patients, with increasing target organ damage but there is an obvious distinction between different organs in terms of incidence. The primary aim of this study was to identify the major initial presentation of SLE patients among the three main South African ethnic groups: Black, Mixed ethnicity, and White. Material and Methods: This was a retrospective descriptive and analytic study in which patients with SLE were compared among the three ethnic groups in South Africa. Data was obtained from patient’s records contained in the Enterprise Content Management System (ECM) and medical records. Results: A total of 198 patients were seen in the Rheumatology Division with SLE between March 1993 and November 1999. The study showed that the most affected group was the mixed ethnicity population (81.4%), followed by the black African group (11.6%), then the white group (7%). Arthritis was the most frequent disorders among the three-different ethnic groups. However, there appear to be some differences in the autoantibody profile.
Conclusion:This study focused on the initial presenting symptoms. A long-term cohort on the development of the disease may yield further results on possible ethnic differences, and continued research into susceptibility loci and phenotypic associations in enriched multi-ethnic cohorts and looking for the causes of death among the three ethnic groups and related to the first presentation is suggested.
Downloads
References
National Institute of Health. Addressing health disparities: the NIH program of action. URL: http://healthdisparities.nih. gov/whatare.html.
National Institute of Health. Addressing health disparities: the NIH program of action. URL: http://healthdisparities.nih. gov/whatare.html.
Robyn Carey, Shereez Simmons, Megan Malherbe, Johan Jansen van Rensburg, Gina Joubert. Clinical features of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) patients attending the SLE outpatient clinic at the Universitas Hospital in Bloemfontein, SA. S Afr Fam Pract; 2008; 50(1):68.
Budhoo, A., Mody, G. M., Dubula, T., Patel, N., & Mody, P. G. (2016). Comparison of ethnicity, gender, age of onset and outcome in South Africans with systemic lupus erythematosus. Lupus, 26(4), 438–446.
Cervera R, Khamashta MA, Hughes GR. The Euro-lupus project: epidemiology of systemic lupus erythematosus in Europe. Lupus 2009; 18: 869–874.
Mok CC, To CH, Ho LY, Yu KL. Incidence and mortality of systemic lupus erythematosus in a southern Chinese population, 2000–2006. J Rheumatol 2008; 35: 1978–1982.
Wadee S, Tikly M, Hopley M. Causes and predictors of death in South Africans with systemic lupus erythematosus. Rheumatology 2007; 46: 1487–1491.
Pons-Estel GJ, Alarco´ n GS, Scofield L, Reinlib L, Cooper GS. Understanding the epidemiology and progression of systemic lupus erythematosus. Semin Arthritis Rheum 2010; 39: 257–268.
Borchers AT, Naguwa SM, Shoenfeld Y, Gershwin ME. The geoepidemiology of systemic lupus erythematosus. Autoimmun Rev 2010; 9: A277–287.
Samanta A, Roy S, Feehally J, Symmons DP. The prevalence of diagnosed systemic lupus erythematosus in Whites and Indian Asian immigrants in Leicester city, UK. Br J Rheumatol 1992; 31: 679–682.
Johnson AE, Gordon C, Palmer RG, Bacon PA. The prevalence and incidence of systemic lupus erythematosus in Birmingham, England. Arthritis Rheum 1995; 38: 551–558.
Hopkinson ND1, Doherty M, Powell RJ. Clinical features and race-specific incidence/prevalence rates of systemic lupus erythematosus in a geographically complete cohort of patients. Ann Rheum Dis. 1994 Oct;53(10):675-80.
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Salah Bashir, David Whitelaw (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Open Access Policy
Libyan journal of medical Research (LJMR).is an open journal, therefore there are no fees required for downloading any publication from the journal website by authors, readers, and institution.
The journal applies the license of CC BY (a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license). This license allows authors to keep ownership f the copyright of their papers. But this license permits any user to download , print out, extract, reuse, archive, and distribute the article, so long as appropriate credit is given to the authors and the source of the work.
The license ensures that the article will be available as widely as possible and that the article can be included in any scientific archive.
Editorial Policy
The publication of an article in a peer reviewed journal is an essential model for Libyan journal of medical Research (LJMR). It is necessary to agree upon standards of expected ethical behavior for all parties involved in the act of publishing: the author, the journal editorial, the peer reviewer and the publisher.
Any manuscript or substantial parts of it, submitted to the journal must not be under consideration by any other journal. In general, the manuscript should not have already been published in any journal or other citable form, although it may have been deposited on a preprint server. Authors are required to ensure that no material submitted as part of a manuscript infringes existing copyrights, or the rights of a third party.
Authorship Policy
The manuscript authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution and intellectual input to the research submitted to the journal, including design, performance, interpretation of the reported study, and writing the manuscript. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors.
Others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the manuscript but without intellectual input should only be recognized in the acknowledgements section of the manuscript. Also, one of the authors should be selected as the corresponding author to communicate with the journal and approve the final version of the manuscript for publication in the LJMR.
Peer-review Policy
- All the manuscripts submitted to LJMR will be subjected to the double-blinded peer-review process;
- The manuscript will be reviewed by two suitable experts in the respective subject area.
- Reports of all the reviewers will be considered while deciding on acceptance/revision or rejection of a manuscript.
- Editor-In-Chief will make the final decision, based on the reviewer’s comments.
- Editor-In-Chief can ask one or more advisory board members for their suggestions upon a manuscript, before making the final decision.
- Associate editor and review editors provide administrative support to maintain the integrity of the peer-review process.
- In case, authors challenge the editor’s negative decision with suitable arguments, the manuscript can be sent to one more reviewer and the final decision will be made based upon his recommendations.
