Can incomplete lupus develop into SLE?
The immediate question asked by people who are diagnosed with ILE is whether the disease will stay the same or will evolve into SLE. Is there any way to predict who will develop SLE? A study that attempted to answer these questions was performed at the Universidad Central del Caribe School of Medicine, Bayamón, Puerto Rico. The results of this study were published in Lupus 2000: 9, 110-115. Because of the great clinical overlap that exists between SLE and other connective tissue diseases, the selection criteria were chosen very carefully (see Table 2). Excluded individuals were those who fulfilled the classification criteria for other rheumatic diseases, or who presented distinctive clinical features of other connective tissue diseases-for example, individuals with fibromyalgia syndrome, which shares many symptoms with SLE. ILE study results In this study, 87 Puerto Ricans (82 women, 5 men) met the study criteria for ILE, with an average disease duration of 4.4 years. These individuals
