Early Diagnosis of Sjogren’s Syndrome: An Introduction to the Newly Designed Iran Criteria for Early Diagnosis of Sjogren’s Syndrome - Abstract
Background: The most commonly used American-European classification group (AECG) classification criteria for Sjogren’s syndrome and the newly developed American College of Rheumatology (ACR)-Sjogren’s International Collaborative Clinical Alliance (SICCA) classification criteria for Sjogren’s syndrome both lack a good sensitivity for diagnosis. The corresponding author (ISA) present a new set of criteria according to the experience of more than 15 years of clinical practice in rheumatology: Iran Criteria for Sjogren’s syndrome.
Methods: Iran criteria consist of two domains considering clinical manifestations of the disease and paraclinical findings. A total of 4 out of 10 points with at least one point from the domain of clinical manifestations make the diagnosis. Medical records of 42 patients at the outpatient Rheumatology Clinic of the author were reviewed for the data on new Criteria for Sjogren’s syndrome, AECG and ACR-SICCA classification criteria for Sjogren’s syndrome. Sensitivity of the three classifications was calculated considering the clinical diagnosis by a single rheumatologist as the gold standard.
Results: 6 male and 36 female patients with a mean follow-up duration of 22.86 ± 35.23 months were included. Mean age at diagnosis and mean disease duration were 47.36 ± 13.33 years and 24.43 ± 29.28 months, respectively. The sensitivity for new Criteria for Sjogren’s syndrome, AECG classification criteria for SS and ACR-SICCA classification criteria for Sjogren’s syndrome were calculated as 100%, 54.8% and 47.6%, respectively.
Conclusions: Iran-criteria for SS are a highly sensitive instrument for detecting Sjogren’s syndrome compared with AECG criteria and ACR-SICCA criteria.