Læknablaðið : fylgirit - 01.05.1978, Qupperneq 119

phenotype determinations was high voltage agarose
electrophoresis with immunofixation, washing and
staining with protein stain, similar to that used
by Alper & al.1)
Also some serum was retained from each
patient for the estimation of serum complement
levels and anti-dsDNA-antibody levels. The
results are still not comp'ete but will be published
later.
Results :
A total of 52 SLE-diagnoses v'ere found, 45
females and 7 males. From these, 31 case-
were estimated as definite SLE, 26 females
and 5 males, a female/male ratio of o,2/l
A total of 6 new definite cases were founc
the years 1966-1970 and 13 in the years 197':
'75. From the population of Iceland (see tabl'-
2) we calculated the incidence in 1966-'70 as
6,0/year/miUion inhabit. and in 1971-'75 íb
12,3/year/mUlion.
On the lst of December 1975, 19 of the defioite
SLE-cases were still alive, a prevalence of 66.9/
million inhabitants.
Two cases with a history of lupus-like syndrome
seemingly caused by drugs were found. One wa?
apparently caused by Eraldin and the other by
Pronestyi. Both fulfilled, however, less than
four ARA-criteria. ( Table 2).
When the patients who we now consider defimte
SLE-cases first received an SLE-diagnosis, their
age distribution varied between 10 and 65 years
with a mean of 33 yéars, see fig. 1 below. The
interval between the appearance of the lst ARA-
Kc of cases
10
Time of estirr.ation Ko of inhabitants
01.12.'65 193.758
01.12.'70 204.578
01.12.'75 218.682
Table 2: The population of Ioeland
criteria and the time of diagnosis varied from
less than a month and up to 35 years. In more
than 507« of thí cases the initial symptom was
a mild arthritis. Aiso relatively frequent were
butterflj' rash and discoid lupus.
A list of íhe frequency of the ARA-criteria
among the 3i definite cases is presented in
table 3. Also included there is an analogous
table from Cohen & al.3)
At the beginning of Dec. 1975 a number of 12
out of the 31 definite SLE-cases had deceased.
Their main causes of death are listed in table 4.
ua table 4 is also included a similar list from
Ðubois & al. 5)
The average time from diagnosis to death was
1,3 years, range: 5 months - 17 years. At the
end of 1975 six from the total of eight with a
history of profuse proteinuria (see table 3) had
deceased.
In table 5 the reeu::> of the HL-A typing
performed on a group of 24 definite plus suspected
SLE-cases are presented. Also, the similar
results for the 18 definite cases are listed
separately. Included for comparison are the
results of HL-A typing performed on a randomiy
selected group of 116 Icelanders1 °) and similar
4
3
2
1+
‘0 10 20 30 40 50 60
9 19 29 39 49 59 69
Age (years)
flg. 1: The age distribution Pt inc tin.e
of the Jnitial SLE-diagnosis