Cotton F, Bouffard-Vercelli J, Hermier M, Tebib J, Vital Durand D, Tran Minh V A, Rousset H
Service de radiologie, centre hospitalier Lyon-Sud, 69495 Pierre-Bénite, France.
Rev Med Interne. 2004 Jan;25(1):8-15. doi: 10.1016/s0248-8663(03)00265-0.
Central nervous (CNS) involvement in SLE is common and can be evaluated with MRI. The primary goal of this study was to evaluate with high-field MRI the CNS involvement in a series of SLE patients with or without neuropsychiatric symptoms. The secondary goal was to detect a possible relationship between MRI and clinical or biological parameters in SLE.
We correlated the clinical and biological parameters of 58 patients with a lupus defined according to the American College of Rheumatology criteria, including 30 with neuropsychiatric manifestations with conventional and modern MRI (including diffusion weighted-images, high-resolution 3D T1 weighted-images). The population studied was compared to a group of 18 normal controls.
In 69% of cases, MRI demonstrated involvement of the CNS both in asymptomatic patients (64.3%) and in patients with neuropsychiatric manifestations (73.3%): microembolic signals, cerebral infarctions (associated with the anti-phospholipid syndrome), atrophy, basal ganglia involvement, posterior leucoencephalopathy, subcortical calcification or hemosiderin deposits (T2*), dilated perivascular spaces.
MRI with adapted sequences clearly demonstrated the cerebral involvement in approximately 70% of SLE patients with or without neuropsychiatric symptoms.
