Eular recommendations for the management of Sjogren?s syndrome

RETAMOZO, SOLEDAD

Amsterdam

Congreso; EUROPEAN LEAGUE AGAINST RHEUMATISM (EULAR); 2018

EULAR

Sjögren?s syndrome (SjS) is a systemic autoimmune disease that affects 0.1% of the European population and that presents with a wide spectrum of clinical manifestations. Primary SjS has no cure, and their therapeutic management has not changed significatively over the past decades. The current approach is still based upon symptomatic treatment of sicca symptomatology and broad-spectrum immunosuppression directed against systemic disease. In spite of the several therapeutic options available, there is insufficient information on their differential efficacy and safety, making that treatment decisions remain challenging in clinical practice. Over the last decade, research has centred on investigating more effective SS-targeted therapies, with the development of various randomised controlled trials (RCT) unfortunately with the absence of game-changing results. With these discouraging results, national efforst promoted by some scientific societies have led to the development of several sets of recommendations. The European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) promoted and supported in 2010 an international collaborative study (EULAR SS Task Force) aimed at developing consensual disease activity indexes in SS. This work was very successful with the development of the first international specific scores for SjS (ESSPRI and ESSDAI), now widely used both in clinical and research settings. The wide consensus obtained on the development of the ESSDAI/ESSPRI scores provided an excellent opportunity to advance in the development of international recommendations for the therapeutic management of SS. Therefore, we continued the work of the Task Force with the development of evidence-, consensus-based official EULAR recommendations following the Delphi methodology, with the aim to provide physicians and patients with a rational therapeutic approach to SjS patients.