Table 6.

Explorative baseline analysis of potential risk factors between patients with or without atherosclerotic plaques ^a

Characteristic	SSc (n = 90)			SLE (n = 100)
	With plaque	Without plaque	P value	With plaque	Without plaque	P value
	(n = 59)	(n = 31)		(n = 49)	(n = 51)
Age (years)	63.9 ± 12.0	45.9 ± 10.9	<0.001	57.7 ± 10.6	39.0 ± 13.0	<0.001
Male sex	10 (16.9%)	2 (6.5%)	0.206	11 (22.4%)	2 (3.9%)	0.007
Postmenopausal status, women only	44/49 (89.8%)	12/29 (41.4%)	<0.001	31/38 (81.6%)	16/49 (32.7%)	<0.001
Hypertension	38 (64.4%)	7 (22.6%)	<0.001	39 (79.6%)	17 (33.3%)	<0.001
Nicotine pack-years	13.9 ± 22.5	4.1 ± 7.8	0.003	14.7 ± 20.6	6.2 ± 8.9	0.009
Dyslipidemia	30 (50.8%)	7 (22.6%)	0.010	24 (49%)	15 (29.4%)	0.045
Age at diagnosis (years)	56.0 ± 14.3	38.7 ± 10.9	<0.001	50.8 ± 14.4	33.4 ± 11.4	<0.001
Pulmonary hypertension	15 (25.4%)	2 (6.5%)	0.045	3 (6.1%)	0 (0%)	0.114
Coronary heart disease	8 (13.6%)	2 (6.5%)	0.484	9 (18.4%)	0 (0%)	0.001
Glomerular filtration rate	85.1 ± 19.7	101.3 ± 13.4	<0.001	89.0 ± 23.1	100.6 ± 24.3	0.019
Autoantibodies
SCL70	12 (20.3%)	14 (45.2%)	0.014	–	–	–
Centromere	28 (47.5%)	8 (25.8%)	0.046	–	–	–
ssDNA	–	–	–	10 (20.4%)	19 (37.3%)	0.063
dsDNA	–	–	–	11 (22.4%)	27 (52.9%)	0.002
Nucleosomes	–	–	–	7 (14.3%)	15 (29.4%)	0.068
RNP	–	–	–	4 (8.2%)	11 (21.6%)	0.092
Immunosuppressive treatment:
Duration of CS use (months)	37.2 ± 61.6	13.1 ± 29.8	0.016	25.1 ± 41.8	25.4 ± 57.0	0.978
Cumulative CS dose (g)	8.0 ± 14.8	2.7 ± 7.5	0.030	7.5 ± 16.9	4.8 ± 8.3	0.335
Duration of AZA use (months)	10.0 ± 29.6	7.9 ± 27.7	0.747	21.8 ± 50.5	7.7 ± 25.2	0.086
Cumulative AZA dose (g)	29.4 ± 83.0	23.7 ± 83.0	0.763	83.9 ± 244.6	25.1 ± 79.6	0.115

Values presented as number of patients (percentage) or mean ± standard deviation.

AZA, azathioprine; CS, corticosteroid; dsDNA, double-stranded DNA; SLE, systemic lupus erythematosus; SSc, systemic sclerosis; ssDNA, single-stranded DNA.

^aOnly variables suggested for logistic regression analysis are reported; complete report available in Additional file 2.