Prognostic value of metabolic syndrome for the development of cardiovascular disease in a cohort of premenopausal women with systemic lupus erythematosus.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic autoimmune disease of unknown etiology. In lupus patients there is an increased cardiovascular risk due to an accelerated atherogenesis. Furthermore, Metabolic Syndrome (MS) adds an independent risk for developing Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) in the population. Therefore, it is important to determine whether lupus patients have an increased risk of developing Cardiovascular Disease in the presence of MS. To estimate the prognostic value of MS in the incidence of cardiovascular events in a cohort of premenopausal patients with SLE. METHODOLOGY Cohort study in 238 patients was carried out. Clinical, biochemical, dietetic and anthropometric evaluations were performed. Patients were classified according to the prevalence of MS in 2001. There was a patient follow-up from 2001 to 2008. In 2008, after studying the records, we obtained the "cases" (patients with CVD) and the "no cases" (patients without CVD). RESULTS The basal prevalence of MS in the cohort was of 21.8% (ATPIII). The MS component with the highest prevalence in the population studied in 2001 was low HDL-Cholesterol (<50mg/dL) with a prevalence of 55.0%. The cumulative incidence of CVD in the group with MS was 17.3% and in the group without MS it was 7.0% with a Relative Risk (RR) of 2.48 (1.12-5.46) and p<0.05. In the multivariable analysis it was noted that MS is a predictive factor of CVD. CONCLUSIONS We observed the prognostic value of MS for an increased risk of cardiovascular damage in premenopausal patients with lupus.