Aetiologies of Acute Complications in Autoimmune Rheumatologic Diseases: A Hospital-Based Cross-Sectional Study

Background: Autoimmune rheumatic diseases (ARD) present unique challenges in clinical practice. Many of them present in medical emergencies in an unstable state and need immediate evaluation for further plans of action. The clinical conundrum is to distinguish between sepsis, disease flare, or Addisonian crisis (AC) (secondary to steroid withdrawal). This may be further complicated by overlapping clinical features like shock/fever and the coexistence of a combination of the above pathophysiologic mechanisms (e.g. AC with sepsis or AC with disease flare). The known biomarkers may not perform optimally to distinguish them and additional supportive investigations like imaging, cultures, autoimmune serological markers, etc. are needed. Ultimately the boundaries between “the art of medicine” and “the science of medicine” may get blurred, as the established literature evidence falls short and the expert opinion is needed in a time-sensitive manner. In this pragmatic study, researchers have attempted to explore the presentation of rheumatologic emergencies on the above three differentials (sepsis, disease flare, and AC). Materials and methods: In this hospital-based cross-sectional study, adult patients (age >18 years) with ARD who had unplanned hospital admission due to acute worsening were enrolled. This study was conducted over one year, after getting the Institutional Human Ethics Committee’s approval. All relevant hematological, immunological, and hormonal parameters (specifically morning cortisol) were collected and analyzed. The aim was to find the individual and combined prevalence of sepsis, disease flare, or AC in this study group. Results: Forty-one patients were analyzed, with females in the majority (95%) and the dominant age group being 26-49 years (56.1%). A majority had a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) (56.1%) or systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) (31.7%); the rest were other connective tissue diseases (12.2%). High-risk Quick Sequential Organ Failure Assessment score (qSOFA) score 2-3 was present in 29.3% while the rest had low-risk scores (qSOFA score 0-1). Thirty-two percent had severe disease activity, 46% had mild to moderate disease activity, and 22% of patients had no disease activity. While 78% of patients had low procalcitonin (PCT) values <0.5 microgm/L (low risk of sepsis), 15% had <20 microgm/L, and 7% percentage of patients had serum levels >20 microgm/L (high risk of sepsis). A total of 73.2% of patients had no evidence of infection while 26.8% had either microbiological/radiological evidence of infection. Only 7% of all patients had the presence of an AC. qSOFA scores didn’t statistically correlate with a diagnosis of infection or AC but positively correlated with PCT and C-reactive protein (CRP) values. Serum PCT didn’t correlate with the presence of infection with statistically significance (p-value 0.217). Conclusion: Infections and sepsis are the most important considerations in the emergency presentations of ARDs. Disease flare and AC are also important differentials. Current inflammatory biomarkers like serum CRP and PCT may be less valuable for discriminating between infectious and non-infectious sepsis, especially in chronic inflammatory diseases like ARDs. qSOFA scores may have a prognostic role with less discriminant value. Management of ARD emergencies needs better biomarkers and more research is warranted.