Table 1:

Differentiating features between flare of lupus nephritis and preeclampsia

	Lupus nephritis	Preeclampsia
History	Any time during pregnancy	Onset after 20 weeks
Clinical examination	Presence of SLE activity in other organ systems (skin, joints, hematologic)	Hematologic, hepatic, and cerebral manifestations can occur with complicated preeclampsia
Urine examination	Presence of active urinary sediment and RBC and WBC casts favors LN	Urine sediment is generally inactive in preeclampsia
Biochemistry	Elevated liver enzymes and hyperuricemia are uncommon in active LN	Elevated liver enzymes and hyperuricemia occur more commonly with preeclampsia
Complement levels	Hypocomplementemia (low C3, C4) with increasing anti dsDNA titres	Complement levels are usually normal to high in preeclampsia
Growth factor levels	sFlt1/PlGF ratio is low, with higher VEGF level in active LN	sFlt1/PlGF ratio is elevated, low VEGF levels

SLE: Systemic lupus erythematosus, dsDNA: Anti-double-stranded deoxyribonucleic acid antibodies, VEGF: Vascular endothelial growth factor, PlGF: Placental growth factor, sFlt1: Soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase-1, LN: Lupus nephritis, RBC: Red blood cells, WBC: White blood cells.