[Diagnosis of lesions of the central nervous system in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus]

Abstract

A total of 60 patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) were under observation; 36 of them had clinical symptoms of the CNS affection and 25 persons included into the control group exhibited no psychic disorders during the clinical examination. Besides, routine clinico-laboratory examinations accepted in rheumatology, the patients were subjected to cranial computer tomography (CT), electroencephalography, examination of cerebral hemodynamics with a radionuclide partechnetate 99mC as well as to psychological testing. Neuropsychic disorders developed during the first four years after the onset of the disease and are grouped in the following way: neurological, border-line, neuropsychic, affective, psychotic, intellectual-mnestic. Moderate affection of the CNS in SLE is characterized by a complex of subjective and objective symptoms: headache, deterioration of memory, insomnia, vertigo, irritability, depressed mood, assymetry of the face innervation, coordinatory disorders. Diffuse widening of the subarchnoidal space, diffuse cerebral changes, interhemispheric assymetry of the venous and arterial phases of cerebral circulation: the most peculiar symptoms of the CNS affection in SLE according to CT and EEG and radionuclide studies of cerebral hemodynamics. Focal changes in the CNS were observed in 50% of the patients with neuropsychic disorders.