Relationship of chronic rhinosinusitis with Sjogren's syndrome, systemic lupus erythematosus, and ankylosing spondylitis

Background: Several studies have demonstrated the association between chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) and autoimmune diseases. However, there are few long-term longitudinal studies on this relationship. Therefore, we investigated the association between CRS and the risk of a subgroup of autoimmune disease using a representative nationwide cohort sample.Methodology: We investigated the association between CRS and autoimmune diseases, including Sjagren's syndrome, systemic lupus erythematosus, and ankylosing spondylitis. A total of 15,130 CRS patients and 30,260 patients without CRS were enrolled after 1:2 propensity score matching. A Cox proportional hazards model was used to analyse the hazard ratio (HR) of CRS for autoi-mmune disease.Results: The incidence of Sjagren's syndrome, systemic lupus erythematosus, and ankylosing spondylitis was 0.55, 0.10, and 0.48 per 1000 person-years, respectively. Among autoimmune diseases, the risk of Sjagren's syndrome in CRS patients was significantly increased to an adjusted HR (aHR) of 1.70, whereas we could not detect any significant risk of developing systemic lupus erythe-matosus or ankylosing spondylitis. In the subgroup analysis according to CRS phenotype, the adjusted HR of developing Sjagren's syndrome was greater in CRS patients without nasal polyps) than in CRS patients with nasal polyps.Conclusions: Our study suggests that CRS without nasal polyps is associated with an increased incidence of Sjagren's syndrome diagnosis compared to CRS without nasal polyps. Additionally, there was no association between CRS and systemic lupus erythe-matosus or ankylosing spondylitis, regardless of CRS phenotype.

Automated summary

This study found a significant association between chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) and an increased incidence of Sjagren's syndrome, while no association was found with systemic lupus erythematosus or ankylosing spondylitis.