TABLE 1.

Clinical characteristics of patients and healthy controls.

Characteristics		SLE patients (n = 27)	Healthy controls (n = 20)
Gender	Male	2	3
	Female	25	17
Age (mean ± SEM)		41 ± 16	37 ± 13
SLEDAI	≤4	14
	>4	13
Anti-dsDNA	+	17
	–	10

A total of 27 patients who were newly diagnosed with SLE and 20 healthy controls were enrolled.

The diagnosis of patients met the American College of Rheumatology classification criteria for SLE.