Background The course and evolution of the SLE depends on the affected organ, adherence to treatment and accumulated organ damage, but ethnicity plays a fundamental role, leading to worse results in the non-Caucasian population. Our goal was to describe the demographic, clinical and serological characteristics of a cohort of patients diagnosed with SLE, treated at a private center in the City of Cali, Colombia.

Methods Descriptive analytical study of a cohort of patients older than 18 years, diagnosed with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus who met the SLICC 2012 classification criteria and who were treated at a Private Center in the City of Cali, Colombia between January 2016, and January 2023.

Categorical variables were expressed in percentages and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI). Continuous variables were expressed as means with standard deviations (SD) and medians with interquartile ranges (IQR).

Results 848 patients were included. The mean age of the patients attended was 48.4 years (SD: 15.34). 92.2% correspond to the female gender. The median follow-up (time between the first and last visit) was 24.9 months (IQR: 10.0–38.28). The ANA titer that we found most frequently was 1/1280 in 21.77% of the cases followed by 1/640 in 18.08% and 1/160 in 17.34%. The anti-DNA was positive in 42.61% of the cases. Regarding antiphospholipid antibodies, the presence of IgG-anticardiolipin (ACL) was positive in 21.37%, IgM-ACL positive in 18.92%, IgG-B2GP (Beta 2 glycoprotein) in 10% and IgM-B2GP in 5.45% of the cases. Lupus anticoagulant was positive in 5.88% of the cases. Regarding disease activity, most patients (53.47%) presented a SLEDAI of 0 (remission), 32.04% a SLEDAI between 1 and 4 (low activity), 12.86% between 5 and 10 (moderate activity) and only 1.63% a SLEDAI greater than 10 (high activity).

Conclusions The results are similar to the data published in different national and international studies.