Background: During the last decade, a wide variety of clinical manifestations and serological disturbances have been described associated to APS. However the real prevalence of most clinical manifestations with several autoantibody-cofactor systems still needs precise epidemiological and clinical long-term study.
Objective: Evaluation of frequency clinical and serological symptoms of SLE and APS in PAPS and SAPS pts.
Methods: Two groups of pts were analyzed: 78 SAPS (76F+2M) and 43 PAPS (32F+11M). All pts met Sapporo criteria for APS and SAPS pts met ARA criteria for SLE. Epidemiological, clinical and serological data were collected during 1995-2005 in the Connective Tissue Disease, Institute of Rheumatology, Warsaw, Poland and modified in 2005 according to actual directive line.
Results: PAPS pts were younger at the onset of the disease compare to SAPS pts. Duration time of the disease to set up the diagnosis as well as observation time was shorter in PAPS pts. Separated PAPS pts showed no more than two ARA criteria for SLE. All clinical ARA criteria for SLE occurred more often in SAPS pts. Also recurrent miscarriages, livedo reticularis and anti AnnexinV abs occurred more often in these pts. Pulmonary embolism, deep venous thrombosis and IgM aCL, LAC, anti beta2GP1, oxyLDL abs occurred more often in PAPS pts. Arterial thrombosis, migraine, crural ulceration, thrombocytopenia, false positive VDRL and IgG aCL abs were detected in almost the same percentage in both groups of pts.
Conclusion: Men are less affected with SAPS. Wide variety of clinical SLE symptoms and immunological disturbances are more frequent in SAPS pts. Also in these pts recurrent miscarriages, livedo reticularis and anti AnnexinV abs occur more often. However pulmonary embolism, deep venous thrombosis with LAC, anti beta2GP1, IgM aCl, anti oxyLDL occur in less frequency in SAPS pts. The presence of arterial thrombosis, migraine, crural ulceration, thrombocytopenia, false positive VDRL and aCL IgG were almost in the same percentage in both groups of pts. Precise determination of the link between clinical symptoms of the APS and antibody-cofactor system needs future study on a bigger sample of pts.