A Meta-Analysis of Cardiovascular Events in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Objective: To identify accurate occurrence and risk of cardiovascular (CV) events (stroke and myocardial infarction [MI]) in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).Methods: Systemic literature search in PubMed and additional manual search were performed to obtain interested studies until March 31, 2018. The pooled incidences and risk of stroke and MI were calculated.Results: A total of 24 studies were included in this meta-analysis. For MI, a total of 1,516 SLE patients were reported to had MI (n=96,154) over a mean follow-up of 9.98years: incidence 2.0% (95% CI: 1.7-2.4%), i.e. 0.20/100pyrs; in the five studies, 360 SLE patients (n=18,943) and 817 controls had MI (n=111,525), revealing that the risk of MI in SLE population was 3.04 times higher than in the general population (RR=3.04, 95% CI: 1.81-5.11). For stroke, the incidence of 17 studies during the 10.09 follow-up period using random model was 4.4% (95% CI: 3.6-5.1%), i.e. 0.44/100 pyrs; in the 7 studies, 694 SLE patients (n=22,594) and 4,034 controls had stroke (n=255,023), indicating that the risk of MI in SLE population was 1.95 times higher than that in the general population (RR=1.95, 95% CI: 1.52-2.53).Conclusion: Based on the findings from previous reports, our meta-analysis showed that patients with SLE have been at higher risk of CV events.