Characteristic of Antinuclear Antibodies in Childhood Systemic Lupus Erythematosus and Its Association with the Complication

Introduction: Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a multiorgan autoimmune disease with the evidence of antinuclear antibody (ANA). Antinuclear antibody generately has some patterns that correlate with any complication or other diseases. Therefore, this study aimed to get the description of ANA pattern in children with SLE, and find its association with proteinuria as SLE complication.Methods: This a cross-sectional study on pediatric subject from Hasan Sadikin Hospital, Bandung, from January 2006-October 2011. We collected demography data, chief complaint, clinical manifestation, and laboratory results. Chi-square analysis was performed to find an association between ANA pattern and SLE complication, in this case was proteinuria.Results: From 63 subjects (mean age 11±3,11 years) which are included, with girl:boys ratio = 5,8:1, 54,8% of them had proteinuria. The majority of subjects showed positive ANA results (77,4%) with speckled pattern as the most frequent type of ANA (40,3%). However, there was no significant association between ANA pattern and proteinuria events (p=0,680).Conclusion: Speckled pattern was the most frequent ANA pattern in children with SLE. However, it has no association with proteinuria events. J Indon Med Assoc. 2012;62:273-6. Keywords: systemic lupus erythematosus in children, speckled ANA pattern, proteinuria.