Sleep disturbance in lupus patients

Abstract

Evaluation of: Chandrasekhara PKS, Jayachandran NV, Rajasekhar L, Thomas J, Narsimulu G: The prevalence and associations of sleep disturbances in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus. Mod. Rheumatol. 19(4), 407–415 (2009). Fatigue is a common problem in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), and there is a great interest in the role of sleep disturbances in this regard. In the current study of 50 SLE patients, two-thirds were poor sleepers according to Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index scores. Despite correlations between sleep disturbance and several factors, SLE disease activity was the only independent determinant of sleep quality. A study limitation was the failure to assess some important factors such as physical activity. Still, these findings underline the importance of sleep disturbance in SLE and its importance as a contributing factor to fatigue.