title: Establishing the Jamaica lupus registry: report of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus attending a major referral hospital in Jamaica.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disorder characterized by multisystem microvascular inflammation with the generation of autoantibodies. There are reports on demographic data and clinical manifestation of lupus in the United States of America and some other developed countries. There is a single study that has reported on the clinical and immunological features of SLE patients in Jamaica and another that reported that the prevalence of SLE in Jamaica was 5-17/100,000 in 1979.
  
  
  METHODS
  A Jamaican lupus registry was established in 2008 at the Department of Medicine, The University of the West Indies. Data were collected using patient records and interview of patients fulfilling the American College of Rheumatology revised diagnostic criteria for SLE. Information on demographics, presence of diagnostic criteria for SLE, presence of complications and other clinical parameters were collected.
  
  
  RESULTS
  There were a total of 107 patients that met the criteria for diagnosis of SLE at the referral centre, 96.3% of them female. Positive ANA (90.7%), arthritis (70.0%), malar rash (53.5%) and a positive dsDNA (40.1%) were the more frequent manifestations and diagnostic indices of the disease. Up to 41.7% of the SLE population suffered some form of complication.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The initiation of a lupus registry has allowed for reporting ofpreliminary demographic, clinical and serological data and identifying of disease burden.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, The University of the West Indies, Kingston 7, Jamaica. demoskey@hotmail.com
authors.forename: A K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Soyibo
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: DeCuelaer
authors.forename: R K
authors.initials: RK
authors.lastname: Miller
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Maloney
authors.forename: E N
authors.initials: EN
authors.lastname: Barton
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007563:Jamaica / Q000453:epidemiology; D008180:Lupus Erythematosus, Systemic / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D008297:Male; D015995:Prevalence; D012042:Registries