• C Ong, K Nicholls, and G Becker.
• Department of Nephrology, The Royal Melbourne Hospital, and Department of Medicine, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
• Intern Med J. 2011 Mar 1; 41 (3): 270278270-8.

BackgroundThe clinical impression of Australian physicians is that systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is more prevalent and more severe in Asian patients than in their Caucasian counterparts. The presence and severity of lupus nephritis is a major determinant of prognosis in SLE, and largely determines disease impact.AimTo analyse the relationships between ethnicity and the prevalence and severity of lupus nephritis (LN) in patients attending a tertiary referral centre (The Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH)).MethodsThe ethnicity of all known patients with biopsy-proven LN was determined according to three definitions of ethnicity - ancestry, country of origin and primary language spoken. The prevalence of Asian ethnicity in the LN cohort was analysed across severity class, and was compared with the prevalences of Asian ethnicity in the general population within the hospital's geographic area, and with that in the relevant RMH cohorts of inpatients and outpatients, over the same time period.ResultsWithin this single tertiary centre, Asian patients were disproportionately represented in both the systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and the LN patient groups, although the distribution of histological severity of LN was not significantly different from Caucasian patients.ConclusionThis study supports the common clinical impression that SLE is more common and more severe in the Asian-Australian population. Asian patients with SLE were more commonly diagnosed with LN. However, the spectrum of histological severity of LN was similar in Asian and Caucasian patients.© 2011 The Authors. Internal Medicine Journal © 2011 Royal Australasian College of Physicians.

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