Almost every patient with systemic lupus erythematosus manifests some abnormality
of the hematopoietic system. We herein reviewed the major clinical and laboratory
hematologic aberrations in 181 patients with systemic lupus erythematosus.
The results are as the followings.
1. Hematologic abnormality was found in 98.4% of the patients, anemia in 91.8%,
leukopenia in 50.4%, granulocytopenia in 28.5%, lymphopenia in 87.0%, thrombocytopenia
in 41.5%. Among these, thrombocytopenia was more frequent in male patients.
2. Peripheral cytopenia was rather combined than solitary, and pancytopenia was the
most frequent finding (28.7%) in combination during the course of disease.
3. According to the mechanism of anemia, anemia of chronic disorder(57.5%),
hemolytic anemia(26.5%), anemia due to renal failure(6.6%), aplastic anemia(5.5%), iron
deficiency anemia(4.4%) were in order.
4. Despite of peripheral cytopenia, those precursors in the bone marrow were almost
always normal or increased in number, and one case showed myelofibrosis
5. Direct and indirect Coombs' test were positive in 51.7% and 19.3% of the patients,
respectively, but autoimmune hemolytic anemia with clinical significance were only 9.9%.
6. Abnormalities in bleeding tendency tests were noticed in 36.0% of the patients.
Bleeding time was prolonged in 11.0%, prothrombin time in 8.7%, and activated partial
thromboplastin time in 27.9% of the patients. Abnormal platet aggregation, anti-platelet
antibody, lupus anticoagulant, and fibrin degradation product were found in some
patients.
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