Background Clinically evident kidney disease eventually occurs in up to one-half of SLE patients. The aim of this study is to describe sociodemographic, clinical, serological and treatment characteristics of a multicenter and multiethnic Latin American SLE cohort of patients with or without lupus nephritis (LN).

Methods GLADEL 2.0 is an ongoing observational cohort. Patients were categorized according to renal involvement: Group I (LN never); Group II (prevalent renal involvement currently inactive); Group III (prevalent renal involvement, currently active) and Group IV (incident renal involvement). Demographic, clinical manifestations, treatments, disease activity were examined at baseline. A descriptive cross-sectional analysis was performed.

Results A total of 991 SLE patients were included, 884 (89.2%) female and 656 (68.3%) Mestizos (Amerindian and European ancestry). Median (IQR) age at cohort entry was 35 (28–45) years and disease duration were 67 months (18–139). Patients with incident LN had a higher proportion of males, were younger, had shorter disease duration and were more frequently Mestizos. Pericarditis and anti-dsDNA were less frequent in group I and MMF in groups I and IV (table 1). A predominance of class IV (49%) was evidenced in 510 patients in which a kidney biopsy was performed (349 prevalent LN and 161 incident LN).

Conclusions Baseline characteristics of GLADEL 2.0 well characterized lupus patients’ cohort with or without LN are described with distinct demographic, clinical and laboratory patterns that will allow both centralized laboratory evaluation of urinary biomarkers and exploratory biomarker analyses including transcriptome and their impact on the outcome of these patients.