[Breast and cervical cancer in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus]

To study the incidence of tumors in a Brazilian sample of women with systemic lupus erythematosus.

This is a retrospective study of 395 medical charts from women with systemic lupus erythematosus diagnosed by the presence of at least 4 of the American College of Rheumatology classification criteria for the diagnosis of this disease and followed for the last 10 years in a rheumatology outpatient clinic. Demographic data (age and ethnicity of patients), data on disease duration, use of immunomodulators and on the presence of neoplasms were listed. Results are presented in frequency and contingency tables. The incidence rate of malignancies in women with lupus was compared with that of the general population for the same demographic region for the past ten years, using data published by the Brazilian National Cancer Institute (INCA). Association studies were carried out by the Fisher and χ(2) tests, when the data were nominal, and by Mann-Whitney test, when numeric. The level of significance was set at 5%.

Twenty-two cases of malignant tumors were identified during these 10 years of follow-up (22 cases/395 or 5.5% of the sample), being the most common those of the uterine cervix (10 cases/395 or 2.5% of the sample) and breast cancer (9 cases/395 or 2.2% of the sample). The presence of tumors was associated with disease duration (p=0.006) and was not influenced by treatment with methotrexate (p=0.1), azathioprine (p=0.9), cyclophosphamide (p=0.6) and glucocorticoids (p=0.3). Breast and uterine cervix tumors were more common in systemic lupus erythematosus women than in the general population (p<0.0001 for both).

A high prevalence of malignant tumors was found in this sample, with tumors being more common in patients with longer disease duration. The most frequent tumors affected the breast and uterus at a higher incidence than in the general population. The presence of tumors was not influenced by the use of glucocorticoids or immunosuppressors.