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REVIEW PAPER
Sarcoma in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus. A systematic review.
1
Department of Occupational, Metabolic and Internal Diseases, Faculty of Health Sciences with the Institute of Maritime and Tropical Medicine, Medical University of Gdansk, Poland
2
Department of Oncological Surgery, Faculty of Health Sciences with the Institute of Maritime and Tropical Medicine, Medical University of Gdansk, Poland
3
Department of Otolaryngology and Maxillofacial Surgery, St. Vincent De Paul Hospital, Pomeranian Hospitals, Gdynia, Poland
These authors had equal contribution to this work
Submission date: 2025-05-12
Final revision date: 2025-06-26
Acceptance date: 2025-08-11
Online publication date: 2025-11-18
Corresponding author
Wojciech Wołyniec
Department of Occupational, Metabolic and Internal Diseases, Faculty of Health Sciences with the Institute of Maritime and Tropical Medicine, Medical University of Gdansk, 9b Powstania Styczniowego St., 81-519 Gdynia, Poland
Department of Occupational, Metabolic and Internal Diseases, Faculty of Health Sciences with the Institute of Maritime and Tropical Medicine, Medical University of Gdansk, 9b Powstania Styczniowego St., 81-519 Gdynia, Poland
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
The risk of neoplasm is elevated in patients with various autoimmune diseases. Although the overall risk of cancer in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients is slightly elevated, the standardized incidence ratio of several cancers is above 3.0. The main risk factor for neoplasm in this group is dysfunction of the immune system caused by the disease and by immunosuppressive drugs. The most common cancers in patients with SLE are related to viral latent infections caused by human herpesvirus 8, Epstein-Barr virus, and human papillomavirus. The risk of sarcoma has not been established in large cohort studies, but several case reports have been published. It remains uncertain whether there is a direct relationship between sarcoma and SLE.
We performed a systematic review of case reports and case series and analyzed the detailed data of 26 SLE patients with sarcoma. The most common sarcomas were Kaposi’s sarcoma and leiomyosarcoma – 2 neoplasms that are potentially related to viral infection.
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Copyright: © Narodowy Instytut Geriatrii, Reumatologii i Rehabilitacji w Warszawie. This is an Open Access journal, all articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license.
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