Musculoskeletal Ultrasound Assessment of Subclinical Arthritis in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus | ||
| The Egyptian Journal of Hospital Medicine | ||
| Volume 101, Issue 1, October 2025, Pages 5111-5120 PDF (453.76 K) | ||
| DOI: 10.21608/ejhm.2025.458568 | ||
| Abstract | ||
| Background: Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a global chronic autoimmune disease (AID) that affects different body tissues. Radiological approaches in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) assist in confirming the diagnosis, monitoring disease progression, and improving the understanding of the pathological basis for its manifestations. Aim: This study aimed to evaluate the role of musculoskeletal ultrasound (MSUS) in detecting subclinical arthritis in lupus and lupus nephritis (LN) patients. Methods: This prospective cross-sectional study was conducted on 50 Lupus nephritis patients diagnosed based on International Society of Nephrology\Renal Pathology (ISN\RPS) and 50 lupus patients diagnosed based on systemic lupus international collaborating clinics (SLICC) classification criteria 2012. Renal biopsy detected classes, activity and chronicity of lupus nephritis. Evaluation of disease activity was done using the SLE Disease Activity Index (SLEDAI-2K) score. Assessment of arthritis of the joints was done using a grey-scale ultrasound. Results: The results showed that 61% of studied cases had mild to moderate disease activity, 35% had severe activity according to SELDAI 2k score. There was no statistically significant difference between SLEDAI-2K score and radiocarpal and metacarpophalangeal joint findings including synovitis, synovial hypertrophy (SH), tenosynovitis and effusion. There was statistically significant association detected between presence of Achilles bursa and disease severity, where the more severity of the disease. There was a significant correlation between duration of disease and radiocarpal affection and ulnocarpal affection and intercarpal affection in LN patients with stage IV and V. Conclusion: MSUS had a valuable role in detecting subclinical arthritis and it provided data on different pathophysiological aspects on joint affection. Interestingly MSUS showed a statistically significant correlation between affected joints and disease duration. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| Systemic lupus erythematosus; Musculoskeletal ultrasound; SLEDAI | ||
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