Skip to main content
  • Meeting abstract
  • Open access
  • Published:

Hopkins Lupus Cohort: assessment of treatment effects

Introduction

The Hopkins Lupus Cohort is a longitudinal study in which all SLE patients are seen quarterly, by protocol, by one rheumatologist. The specific aims include prevention of organ damage. In this abstract, two projects - noncalcified plaque (NCP) and treatment of antiphospholipid antibodies - will be reviewed.

Methods

For the study on NCP, 64-slice (n = 106) or 320-slice (n = 121) coronary multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) was performed in 227 patients with SLE. The MDCT scans were evaluated quantitatively by a radiologist, using dedicated software. The NCP score was a sum of plaque severity multiplied by the plaque composition divided by the number of vessels examined.

For the study on treatment of antiphospholipid antibodies, we studied 1,795 SLE patients (56% Caucasian, 37% African American, 93.3% female, mean age 37.0 ± 12.5) with no previous thrombosis prior to entry in the cohort. The primary outcome was first thrombotic event (arterial or venous). Univariate analysis and multivariable modeling were used to examine associations between prednisone, hydroxycholoquine, and NSAID use with the risk of thrombosis.

Results

The multiple regression model for the mean level of NCP is shown in Table 1. The multiple regression model for prevention of thrombosis is presented in Table 2.

Table 1
Table 2

Conclusion

For NCP, methotrexate increased NCP, possibly via homocysteine. For thrombosis, hydroxychloroquine significantly reduced thrombosis, but prednisone increased it. SLE longitudinal cohorts can address many clinical questions that are not suitable for clinical trials.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Petri, M. Hopkins Lupus Cohort: assessment of treatment effects. Arthritis Res Ther 14 (Suppl 3), A52 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1186/ar3986

Download citation

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/ar3986

Keywords