Brain pathology in systemic lupus erythematosus.

Brain pathology was documented in 10 patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), 7 of whom had clinical neuropsychiatric SLE prior to death. This was manifested by seizures (5 patients), organic brain syndrome (3 patients) and psychosis (2 patients). Multifocal cerebral cortical microinfarcts, associated with microvascular injury, were documented in 4 patients and in our study constituted the predominant histopathologic abnormality attributable to SLE. Changes of a healed vasculitis in medium sized leptomeningeal vessels were seen in 1 case. Agreement between the clinical and pathologic classification of neuropsychiatric SLE was observed in 7/10 (70%) cases and the strongest association was between the presence of cerebral microinfarcts and seizures (4/5 patients, p less than 0.05). No correlation was observed with anticardiolipin, anti-P, lymphocytotoxic and antineuronal antibodies.