
Pleurisy is the most common lung disease at SLE. Illustration: BruceBlaus / wikimedia.org. CC BY SA 4.0
The sum of all types of lung manifestations at SLE is described in up to 60%. Most people have little symptoms and do not need special treatment
- Pleurisy is most common
- Symptoms are pain-dependent pain, most often with other signs of disease activity
- Blood tests may show elevated CRP (which is not common in SLE) and increased blood pressure response
- immune complex-nedslag, transsudat
- Lung infections (bacterial pneumonia) occur more frequently than in the general population
- Please see Opportunistic infections here
- Interstitial Lung Disease (ILD) is rare
- Pneumonitis (inflammation, not infection) approx. 1-4% (abrupt onset, often in case of illness).
- Differential diagnosis: pulmonary haemorrhage (please see below)
- Pulmonary Hypertension (PAH) at approx. 4% with SLE (primary or secondary about 50%:
- Causes: Combinations of heart valve insufficiency, embolism, interstitial lung disease (reference: Parabu A, 2009)
- Pulmonary haemorrhage / kapillaritt 2-4% (mortality up to 70-90%)
- Differential diagnoses: GPA (Wegeners Granulomatosis), Microscopic Polyangiitis (MPA), Goodpastures syndrome, Cryoglobulinemia, Behcet's disease) (reference: Ednalino C, 2015)
- Embolism 10% (Antiphospholipid syndrome)
- "Shrinking lungs" 10% means that the diaphragm is high (diaphragm dysfunction, myopathy)
- Drug side effects (rare):
- Lung cancer may have a slightly increased incidence in SLE than in the general population (reference: Bin J, 2007)
Literature
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