Correlation between serum and urine free light chains and clinical
correlates in SSc patients
No significant difference was found between sFLC and uFLC and disease
subsets, NVC and autoantibody specificity (p >0.05).
SSc patients with increased λ-sFLC had statistically higher serum levels
of ESR [43 mm/h (25 mm/h - 74 mm/h) vs 16 mm/h (9 mm/h - 32
mm/h), p=0.005] and CRP [5600 mcg/l (3800 mcg/l - 16300 mcg/l)vs 1500 mcg/l (800 mcg/l - 3100 mcg/l), p=0.008] than SSc
patients with λ-sFLC under 26.3 mg/L cut-off.
SSc patients with increased serum k + λ sum had statistically higher
serum levels of ESR [23 mm/h (16 mm/h - 43 mm/h) vs 16 mm/h (9
mm/h - 30 mm/h), p=0.034] and CRP [2800 mcg/l (1900 mcg/l - 6050
mcg/l) vs 1200 mcg/l (700 mcg/l - 2900 mcg/l), p=0.003] than
SSc patients with normal levels of total sFLC. Moreover, SSc patients
with increased serum k + λ sum had statistically higher DAI [2.5 (1.55
- 3.86) vs 1.5 (0.6 - 2.5), p=0.024] and DSS [6 (5 - 7)vs 5 (3 - 6), p=0.015] than SSc patients with normal levels of
total sFLC.
A trend of a positive linear correlation was found between k-sFLC and
DAI (r=0.290, p=0.014).
SSc patients with increased k-uFLC had statistically higher DAI [1.9
(1.2 - 3.3) vs 1.4 (0.5 - 2.13), p=0.048] than SSc patients
with k-uFLC under 15.1 mg/L.
No differences emerged in patients diagnosed with arterial hypertension
and both serum and urinary FLC (p >0.05).