Maternal, Fetal and Neonatal Outcomes in Pregnant Women with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus: A Comprehensive Review Study

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease with multiple organ involvement and periods of relapse and remission that mainly affects young women of childbearing age. In this regard the reproductive health is an important issue. Although diagnosis, treatment and management of pregnancy in SLE women have been improved recently, but the main concern is effects of SLE on maternal, fetal and neonatal outcomes. This study aimed to investigate the maternal, fetal and neonatal outcomes in pregnant women with SLE.
The databases of PubMed, Medline, Scopus and Web of Science as well as domestic database (Persian) such as SID, Magiran, Irandoc, and Google Scholar were searched with using keywords such as" Systemic lupus erythematosus"; "Pregnancy"; "Neonatal lupus"; "maternal, fetus or neonatal outcome"; and equivalent Persian words. Included were all Persian and English articles, published between 2000 and May 2017. Finally, a total of 77 studies were included.
Adverse perinatal outcomes increase in pregnancies with lupus. Outcomes include respiratory, cardiovascular, blood and skin disorders in mothers; stillbirth, spontaneous, and recurrent abortion in fetuses and neonatal lupus, prematurity, intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR), and small for gestational age (SGA) in neonates, respectively.
Pregnant women with SLE are at high risk due to increased complications for both mother and fetus. It seems broad control of the women before fertilization, so that they be at full remission in the beginning of pregnancy and the disease activity be in complete control, it can help to improve outcomes of pregnancy and so better results can be expected.