Lupus Incidence, Prevalence Differ by Race

Lead author of the California paper, Dr. Maria Dall’Era of the University of California, San Francisco, tells Reuters Health by email, “These registries were established with a large grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and are very important to maintain. Several years of intense work was required for case finding of all people with SLE living in San Francisco in a defined period of time. Now that the challenging work of creating the registries has been completed, it is highly beneficial to follow these patients over time to answer important questions about the progression, treatment, and outcomes of SLE in the various racial and ethnic groups.”

“In San Francisco,” Dr. Dall’Era notes, “we have received a second grant from the CDC to enable us to follow our patients in a longitudinal cohort and also to collect blood specimens to study genetics, epigenetics, and environmental exposures. Through our work, we hope to better understand the reasons underlying the racial and ethnic disparities of SLE observed in the registry: the biological, environmental, and social determinants of health and disease.”

In an editorial that accompanies the papers, Drs. Susan Manzi of the Allegheny Health Network in Pittsburgh, and Joan Merrill of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation in Oklahoma City, write, “With better clarity around the definition of lupus that covers more of the spectrum without losing specificity for the pathology and a broader and refined approach to case ascertainment, our understanding of the real burden of disease in the U.S. will only improve.”³

References

1. Dall’Era M, Cisternas MG, Snipes K, et al. The incidence and prevalence of systemic lupus erythematosus in San Francisco County, Calif.: The California Lupus Surveillance Project. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2017 Sep 10. doi: 10.1002/art.40191. [Epub ahead of print]
2. Izmirly PM, Wan I, Sahl S, et al. The incidence and prevalence of systemic lupus erythematosus in New York County (Manhattan), N.Y.: The Manhattan Lupus Surveillance Program. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2017 Sep 10. doi: 10.1002/art.40192. [Epub ahead of print]
3. Manzi S, Merrill J. Lupus, the chameleon: Many disguises difficult to capture. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2017 Sep 10. doi: 10.1002/art.40190. [Epub ahead of print]