Impaired thinking begins early with lupus

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Patients with newly diagnosed lupus show impairments in several thinking or "cognitive" abilities compared with healthy individuals, according to findings in the Journal of Rheumatology.

Lupus, technically known as systemic lupus erythematosus or SLE, is a chronic "autoimmune" disease in which the immune system can confuse healthy and foreign tissues and sometimes attacks both. The disorder disproportionately affects women. It is marked sometimes by a characteristic butterfly-shaped rash on the face.

The condition can vary widely in severity, manifesting as skin rash and arthritis or leading to damage to the kidneys, heart, lungs and brain to varying degrees. There is no cure.

Dr. Michelle Petri, of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and colleagues compared cognitive ability of 111 patients recently diagnosed with SLE and 79 normal controls, using a computerized test that assess thinking speed and efficiency.

The SLE patients had significantly lower scores than comparison subjects on a number of cognitive tasks. Further analysis showed that as lupus severity increased, many of the scores worsened. Patients with depression also showed greater impairments than those without depression.

No SLE medications or laboratory findings were linked to cognitive ability, the report indicates.

The results suggest that even before major symptoms are present, SLE patients can have impaired thinking, Petri and colleagues conclude.

SOURCE: Journal of Rheumatology, September 2008.