You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Concise report
Incidence of primary Sjögren’s syndrome in Slovenia
  1. M Plešivčnik Novljan1,
  2. B Rozman1,
  3. A Hočevar1,
  4. M Grmek2,
  5. T Kveder1,
  6. M Tomšič1
  1. 1Department of Rheumatology, University Medical Centre Ljubljana, Vodnikova 62, Ljubljana, Slovenia
  2. 2Department of Nuclear Medicine, University Medical Centre Ljubljana, Zaloška 7, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
  1. Correspondence to:
    Dr M Tomšič
    matija.tomsicguest.arnes.si

Abstract

Objective: To determine the annual incidence of primary Sjögren’s syndrome (pSS) in Slovenia.

Methods: All patients admitted to our department of rheumatology or referred to our outpatient clinic between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2002 owing to sicca symptoms or because of a suspicion of SS were examined. Our rheumatological department is the only tertiary referral centre for the Ljubljana region, which has a population of 599 895 Caucasian people. All patients were evaluated by the validated European criteria for SS. The exact 95% confidence interval (CI) based on binomial distribution was created for the incidence estimate.

Results: 248 patients were examined; 71 of them (28.6%; 65 women, 6 men) were diagnosed as having pSS. Their mean (SD) age was 51.3 (14.5) years (range 19–78). The average annual incidence for pSS in our study population was calculated as 3.9 cases per 100 000 inhabitants (95% CI 1.1 to 10.2).

Conclusion: The estimated annual incidence of pSS in Slovenia is 3.9/100 000.

  • Sjögren’s syndrome
  • incidence
  • Slovenia

https://doi.org/10.1136/ard.2003.014027

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes