Longitudinal Myelitis as a Rare First Symptom of Lupus in Overlap Syndrome

Beata WILCZEK-PARADOWSKA1, Michal PARADOWSKI2

1Department of Neurology, 4th Military Hospital With Polyclinic, Wroclaw, Poland
2Department of Neurology, Medical University Wroclaw, Wroclaw, Poland

Keywords: Systemic lupus erythematosus, magnetic resonance imaging, Sjögren’s syndrome

Abstract

In this article, we present a 46-year-old female patient who had been diagnosed with Sjögren’s syndrome for 14 years. After initial non-specific signs of abdominal and back pain, neurological symptoms were observed, leading to a final diagnosis of overlap syndrome of neuropsychiatric systemic lupus erythematosus and Sjögren’s syndrome. Inflammatory myelopathy, referred to as longitudinal myelitis, caused severe and persistent neurological deficit in our patient. The provided magnetic resonance imaging scans of the spine show initial and one-year follow-up changes. Thus, we report rare and severe initial symptoms of lupus.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Financial Disclosure

The authors received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.