Adults younger than 40 with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) have nearly five times the risk of mortality compared with peers who don’t have the condition, a study shows.

The finding comes from a linked analysis of records in a UK primary care database in which mortality was compared for the 4340 people with SLE and nearly 22,000 age and sex-matched controls.

Overall, people with SLE had a 1.8-fold higher mortality rate than the control population over some 6.5 years of follow-up. 

The Dutch researchers went on to examine the effect of medications on mortality, finding that patients who were taking hydroxychloroquine with a cumulative low dose were 45% less likely to die over follow-up than those not on the therapy.