N Khamrayeva, E Toirov
Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is one of the most severe systemic diseases of the connective tissue, more common at the age of 20-40 years, about 90% of cases are women [1;2]. Over the past decades, there has been an increase in the incidence of SLE (50-250 cases per 100 thousand population), which is due to the improvement of diagnostic methods, the identification of latent and chronic forms, and in some cases, overdiagnosis. The diagnostic criteria of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) (1982, 1997) were developed for epidemiological studies and do not always allow one to exclude or confirm the diagnosis of SLE with absolute probability, especially in the early stages and in atypical variants of the disease [3;4] . When studying the medical records of one of the major medical institutions, J. Calyo et al. [5] found that among patients with a diagnosis of SLE, only two-thirds met the criteria for ACR, while about 10% had signs of lupus that were not sufficient to verify a reliable diagnosis, and 25% had a picture of fibromyalgia in combination with positive antinuclear antibodies (ANA), while even with long-term follow-up, no evolution of the disease into reliable SLE was noted. The question of improving the criteria for diagnosing SLE, “chameleon disease”, or “great disease simulator” has been repeatedly raised [6]. In 2012, a group of experts from Systemic Lupus International Collaborating Clinics (SLICC) presented the results of a long-term analysis of a large number of case histories (about 700 patients) with SLE and proposed modified diagnostic criteria for the diagnosis, expanded by introducing a number of dermatological , neurological signs with more accurate indicators [7;8].
