Black patients with systemic lupus erythematosus demonstrated an increased comorbidity burden in every organ system compared with both whites with lupus and healthy blacks, according to findings published in Arthritis Care and Research.
“Our study is important because it uses a novel electronic health record (EHR)-based technique called phenome-wide association study (PheWAS) to examine racial disparities in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE),” April Barnado, MD, MSCI, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told Healio Rheumatology. “PheWAS scan across billing codes in the electronic health record (EHR) similar to a GWAS scans across the genome. PheWAS have uncovered novel genetic associations in autoimmune diseases and been validated in follow-up studies.”
