Myocardial late gadolinium enhancement in systemic lupus erythematosus as a marker of chronic inflammation

Background Cardiac involvement of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is one of the main complications contributing to morbidity and mortality, however a significant portion of patients presents with subclinical disease. Non-invasive contrast-enhanced cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging is a well-established diagnostic tool to identify myocardial tissue alterations and morphological and functional changes. In this study, we aimed to assess cardiac abnormalities in SLE patients using LGE-CMR and, furthermore, the relation of serological inflammatory biomarkers to the cardiac LGE-CMR findings.