ArticleLupus science & medicine2026
Elevated serum brain injury markers are associated with disease activity, pro-inflammatory cytokine levels and cognitive dysfunction in adolescents with childhood-onset SLE.
Article in Lupus science & medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
16 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveThis study examined serum brain injury markers and their associations with disease features, cytokines associated with microglial activation in lupus and cognitive dysfunction (CD) in adolescents with childhood-onset SLE (cSLE).
methodsWe used cross-sectional data from cSLE patients (aged 12-17 years) and age-matched, sex-matched healthy controls. Serum levels of brain injury markers (serum neurofilament light, glial fibrillar acidic protein (GFAP), Tau), interferon (IFN)-α, IFN-γ and interleukin-6 (IL-6) were quantified using Simoa assays. cSLE features included disease activity (Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Disease Activity Index 2000), damage (Systemic Lupus International Collaborating Clinics damage index) and glucocorticoid (GC) exposure. A neurocognitive battery assessed executive function, attention and working memory, and CD was determined using standardised scores. We compared brain injury marker levels between cSLE and controls, and those with and without CD using Wilcoxon rank-sum tests. We calculated correlations between injury markers, disease features and cytokines and examined differences in disease features between those with and without high-level brain injury markers (>90th percentile) (using Bonferroni correction).
resultsParticipants included 56 cSLE patients (median disease duration=10.6 months (IQR 2.0-14.1), one with neuropsychiatric lupus) and 43 controls. Levels were higher in cSLE versus controls for GFAP (z=-3.97, p<0.001), Tau (z=-2.10, p=0.035), IFN-α (z=-4.80, p<0.001), IFN-γ (z=-2.42, p=0.015) and IL-6 (-3.09, p=0.002). Severe CD (≥2 SD from standardised mean) was present in 31% cSLE versus 9% controls (chi2=6.69, p=0.01), associated with higher Tau levels for cSLE (z=-3.94, p<0.001). High-level brain injury markers were observed in 13 (23%) cSLE patients associated with higher SLEDAI-2K, IL-6 levels and current GC dose.
conclusionBrain injury marker levels were high and associated with disease activity and CD in this cSLE adolescent cohort, suggesting a link between systemic inflammation and clinically under-detected neuronal/glial injury. Larger, longitudinal studies should explore the potential clinical utility of brain injury markers for clinical assessment of brain involvement in cSLE.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.