Correlation of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus disease activity index (SLEDAI) with serum uric acid level in lupus patients

Systemic lupus erythematosus is a common rheumatologic disease. Systemic Lupus Erythematosus disease activity index (SLEDAI) is a valuable and reliable scoring for lupus activity. Always clinical and paraclinical findings in SLEDAI don’t answer with disease progression, and also some factors including ESR, CRP, Anti-dsDNA and complements may be increased in non-active disease. Therefore, we decided to assess serum uric acid level as an index of disease activity. This cross- sectional study was carried out on lupus patients that referred to the rheumatology clinic of Imam Reza hospital in Mashhad. Serum uric acid level, Anti-dsDNA, ESR, C3 and C4 were measured with standard methods and SLEDAI determined for all patients. Pearson’s correlation coefficient ranking was used to evaluate the relation of serum uric acid level with SLEDAI and Anti-dsDNA. In this study, 82 patients (76 females and 6 males) with an average age of 32.02 ± 9.29years and mean disease duration of 4.49± 4.68 years were studied. Serum uric acid levels correlated directly and significantly with SLEDAI (P=0.001, r=0.35), Anti-dsDNA(P=0.0001, r=0.54), and Serum uric acid levels had indirect and significant correlation with C3 (P=0.04, r=-0.22), and C4 levels (P=0.02, r=-0.25). Our study demonstrated that high serum uric acid levels were correlated with lupus disease activity. Nevertheless, application of serum uric acid level, as an index of lupus disease activity, needed more studies.