Author(s): Turiel M, Gianturco L, Galaverna S, Colombo C, Stella D, Sarzi-Puttini P, Atzeni F, Bodini BD
Systemic autoimmune diseases (SADs) are associated with significantly enhanced cardiovascular (CV) morbidity and mortality due to a cluster of risk factors. Among them we find traditional markers of CV risk but also specific risk factors principally related to inflammation and autoimmunity. Therefore, CV involvement assessment in those diseases is more and more important and several authors have been studying for the last years that phenomenon. The most important goal for all of them is CV prevention and follow-up of subjects with such abnormalities; in particular, CV burden is mainly due to atherosclerosis (ATS). So, in order to achieve the best CV prevention program a very early diagnose of ATS in these patients (pts) is fundamental, especially in those phases of disease in which no symptoms are present and clinical manifestations are not clearly visible. In this review, our aim was to find the best marker for identifying early ATS in systemic autoimmune diseases (SADs) by starting our long experience in this field.
