New diagnostic criteria for the neuropsychiatric form of systemic lupus erythematosus

: Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmunologic illness, which apart from changes in the skin, the locomotor system and the internal organs, attacks also the nervous system. The paper presents 19 neuropsychiatric symptomic syndromes which after conduction of multidisciplinary, international research were accepted by the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) as the criteria of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). This broadens the criteria applied since 1982, which were only considering acute symptoms and psychoses as characteristic of the neuropsychiatric form of systemic lupus erythematosus (NPSLE). In the new neurologic criteria concerning the CNS are: epileptic attacks and acute attack disorders, headaches, vascular diseases, demyelinating syndrome, aseptical meningitis, chorea, myelopathy. Psychiatric syndromes which make up the new criteria are: acute amentive state, anxiety disorders, cognitive function impairment, affective disorders, psychoses. The criteria connected to the CNS are: cranial nerve damage, mononeuropathy, damage of nerve plexus, polyneuropathy, vegetative neuropathy, myasthenia and acute inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy. Clinical symptoms of these syndromes were set and laboratory and visualising tests were developed, which are useful in their diagnosis. The intention of the ACR in setting new, significantly broader criteria of NPSLE, was to stress the diversity of symptoms and for a practical aspect to allow the diagnosis of NPSLE in patients having this disease, in whom the symptoms connected with the nervous system may dominate in the clinical picture, or may be before the dermatological, locomotor or internal organ symptoms.