Comorbidities of systemic lupus erythematosus: A 7-year retrospective study of a large North Texas patient cohort

In support of current NIH initiatives, this study utilized existing patient data in an effort to improve the understanding of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and associated comorbidities. Hospital discharge data for the years 1999-2005 were provided by the Dallas Fort-Worth Hospital Council for the 12-county Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). Deterministic linkage was utilized to match patient records and certify each case as unique. The purposes of this study were to: 1) Identify the most frequent comorbidities of patients diagnosed with SLE (N=14,829); 2) Delineate comorbidities of patients with SLE by age; and 3) Examine the predictive effects of sex, age, race, ethnicity, and payor source on the most frequent comorbidities of patients with SLE. Logistic regression revealed significance in the odds of specific comorbidities, based on sex, age, race, ethnicity, and/or payor source. Frequencies indicated that hypertensive disease, metabolic and immunity disorders, and diseases of the blood and blood-forming organs were the primary sub-categories of comorbidities across all age groups. Younger patients were more likely to have renal and mental comorbidities, as well as neurological in the form of convulsions. For patients aged 45 and over, additional major sub-categories of comorbidities were for other forms of heart disease and ischemic heart disease. This presentation will provide descriptive and regression results for the top 100 comorbidities of patients with SLE. Additionally, due to the high number of ‘unspecified' diagnoses across all disease sub-categories and age groups (especially 18-44), these will be presented as discussion points for future research.