Cerebrovascular Events in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus: Results From an International Inception Cohort Study

OBJECTIVE: To determine the frequency, associations and outcomes of cerebrovascular events (CerVEs) in a multi-ethnic/racial, prospective, SLE disease inception cohort. METHODS: Patients were assessed annually for 19 neuropsychiatric (NP) events including 5 types of CerVEs: (i) Stroke; (ii) Transient ischemia; (iii) Chronic multifocal ischemia; (iv) Subarachnoid/intracranial hemorrhage; (v) Sinus thrombosis. Global disease activity (SLEDAI-2K), SLICC/ACR damage index (SDI) and SF-36 scores were collected. Time to event, linear and logistic regressions and multi-state models were used as appropriate. RESULTS: Of 1,826 SLE patients, 88.8% were female, 48.8% Caucasian, mean±SD age 35.1±13.3 years, disease duration 5.6±4.2 months and follow-up 6.6±4.1 years. CerVEs were the fourth most frequent NP event: 82/1,826 (4.5%) patients had 109 events, 103/109 (94.5%) were attributed to SLE and 44/109 (40.4%) were identified at enrollment. The predominant events were stroke [60/109 (55.0%)] and transient ischemia [28/109 (25.7%)]. CerVEs were associated with other NP events attributed to SLE (HR (95% CI): (3.16; 1.73-5.75) (p