Low dosage use of cyclophosphamide improves the survival of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus

Objective To investigate the effect of cyclophosphamide (CYC) on organ involvement and SLE patients’ overall and cause-specific mortality. Methods Information about CYC prescription was taken from the Jiangsu Lupus database, which was set up to collect medical records from SLE patients since their first admission during 1999–2009 in Jiangsu province, China. Follow-up studies were carried out in 2010 and 2015 to check the survival status of the patients. Cox regression models were used to estimate the hazard ratio (HR) and 95% CI . Kaplan–Meier model was used to assess the effect of CYC on mortality between organ involvement and non-involvement. Results There were 221 deaths observed out of 2446 SLE patients. CYC users decreased overall mortality of SLE (8.4%) with adjusted HR (95% CI ) of 0.74 (0.56–0.97), as compared to non-users. A decrease in overall mortality of SLE was found in the low dosage (