THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CLINICAL MANIFESTATIONS AND COMORBIDITIES BETWEEN WOMEN AND MEN WITH SLE TREATED IN UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL OF SPLIT FROM JANUARY 2007 TO DECEMBER 2017

Sa？etak Background: SLE is chronic multisystem autoimmune disease with numerous clinical manifestations. Many comorbidities have significant impact on clinical course of SLE. Th ey are partly mediated by the primary disease; some are partly caused by the treatment and some of the comorbidities are the result of genetic susceptibility, independently of the main disease Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine the differences between clinical manifestations and comorbidities in women and men with SLE treated in University Hospital Centre Split from January 2007 to December 2017. Methods: The study included 268 patients with SLE diagnosis from the beginning of 2007 to the end of 2017. The data were collected from outpatient clinics, stationers and daily hospital of the Department of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology of the Clinic for Internal Diseases of University Hospital Centre Split. During the collection process, the data were included in the Microsoft Office program package, or in Microsoft Excel, a program designed to create a table of budgets. For statistical analysis, SPSS 25 was used. We used χ2 test and multivariate logistic regression. Results: Among 268 SLE patients, there were 26 (10%) males and 242 (90%) females. The median age of the patients was 52 years (min-max: 22–88 years; Q1-Q3: 41-62.75 years). We explored the association of individual clinical manifestations and comorbidities with gender with the χ2 test. A statistically significant association was obtained for Sj？gren’s syndrome and associated neoplasms with female gender, and for antiphospholipid syndrome (APS) and vasculitis with male gender. According the median age we divided our respondents into three groups. In the oldest age group >70 years there were no males, so we excluded patients > 70 years. The χ2 test showed statistically significant association between younger age and skin changes and lupus nephritis. In older patients, statistical significant relation was found for dyslipidemia, hypertension, osteoporosis, gastritis and hear involvement. In multivariate logistic regression with the age and gender as independent variables, significantly higher frequency of Sjogren’s syndrome (P = 0.04) and associated neoplasms (P = 0.004) were found in females, while vasculitides (P = 0.014) and APS (P = 0.003) were more frequent in males with SLE. Conclusions: Women with SLE are more frequently affected by Sj？gren’s syndrome and associated neoplasms, while men with SLE suffer more frequently of vasculitis and APS. Lupus nephritis and skin changes usually occur in both