Oral contraceptive therapy and systemic lupus erythematosus

The relationship between oral contraceptive therapy and systemic lupus erythematosus is not well defined. It has been reported that oral contraceptives may induce lupus: they may also exacerbate pre-existing disease. This report concerns a young woman in whom systemic lupus erythematosus developed three weeks after the commencement of oral contraceptive therapy, but who was shown to have had a chronic biological false positive serological test for syphilis for eight months prior to this. The significance of false positive serological tests for syphilis and the effect of female sex hormones on disease activity in systemic lupus erythematosus is discussed.