Pregnancy after lupus nephritis

Abstract

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease that affects primarily women, commonly in their reproductive years but does not influence fertility. For these reasons, the clinician has often to face the many problems of pregnancy in patients with SLE including the influence of SLE on fetal outcome and that of pregnancy on SLE. As there is increasing evidence of an important role of sex hormones in immunity, the influence of pregnancy on SLE is probably due to the changes in sex hormone levels during pregnancy that are more important than in any other period of life. Early reports emphasized a high fetal and maternal risk in particular in patients with lupus nephritis. However in the same period the prognosis of lupus nephritis was poor, so it was difficult to know whether pregnancy actually influenced the prognosis of the disease. More recent prospective studies indicate that pregnancy is safe for the majority of mothers if it is planned when SLE is quiescent. Instead, although fetal risk has been progressively reduced in the last 40 years, it continues to be higher than that occurring in pregnancies of healthy women. In particular the presence of antiphospholipid antibodies considerably worsen the fetal outcome.