|Articles|December 1, 2014

New Questionnaire Tracks Lupus Outcomes

(ACR2014) A team from Rush University says their new 10-point instrument developed should be useful to track lupus disease status for trials and in the clinic.

Giangreco D, Devilliers H, Annapureddy N et al. Lupus Impact Tracker Is Responsive to Changes in Disease Activity in Lupus. ACR Abstract #2989 2014;66:S1306. Abstract Supplement, 2014 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting

In patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), a new study shows that the Lupus Impact Tracker (LIT), trademarked by Rush University Medical Center and the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, is responsive to physician- and patient-assessed changes in disease status.

Researchers from the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago presented the study on at the American College of Rheumatology annual meeting in Boston.

LIT is a 10-item questionnaire that assesses the severity of lupus-associated symptoms and medication-related side effects. Patients are intended to fill out a LIT once every four weeks, calculate a score ranging from 0 to 40 (with a higher score indicating greater disease impact), and share the results with their doctors.

In this study, the researchers collected longitudinal data from 182 routine clinical care visits. They used a mixed-model regression analysis to compare changes in LIT against health status anchors such as SLEDAI physician global assessment (PGA), total SELENA-SLEDAI score, SELENA-Flare Index (SFI), and patient-reported changes in SLE health status.

The researchers found that LIT scores correlated with changes in PGA (p<0.05), total SLEDAI (p=0.01), and SFI (p<0.05), and patient-reported changes in SLE health status (p=0.001).

“In addition to being used in clinical trials," they assert, "LIT is an effective tool that may be used by patients and physicians in facilitating communication and tracking disease impact in SLE."