RESEARCH ARTICLE
Evaluation of Arteriosclerosis Using the Brachial-Ankle Pulse Wave Velocity in Patients with Visceral Lesion-Free Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Characterized by Skin Lesions
Kimiko Maruyama, Takaharu Ikeda, Katsunori Tanaka, Fukumi Furukawa*
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2015Volume: 9
First Page: 30
Last Page: 33
Publisher ID: TODJ-9-30
DOI: 10.2174/1874372201509010030
Article History:
Received Date: 12/03/2015Revision Received Date: 9/08/2015
Acceptance Date: 10/08/2015
Electronic publication date: 18/12/2015
Collection year: 2015
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Recently, the cardio-/cerebrovascular lesion-related mortality rate has been high in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). In these patients, the risk of cardio-/cerebrovascular lesions is also higher than in the general population. Cardio-/cerebrovascular lesions may occur during long-term follow-up. In this study, we evaluated arteriosclerosis using the brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity (baPWV) in visceral lesion-free SLE patients with skin lesions. In these patients, baPWV was higher than in healthy adults even at a young age. This suggests that baPWV is a possible tool to evaluate the patient’s vascular function, which was difficult to evaluate using a conventional sera arteriosclerosis index. Even when conditions are characterized by skin lesions, it may be important to consider the influence on the cardio-/cerebrovascular systems, as indicated for patients with systemic symptoms.