How would you approach the work up of SLE in a patient over 80 years old?

Elderly onset lupus is uncommon and in the past twenty-five years has been reported to occur in as few as 6% of patients to as many as 19% of patients with the diagnosis of lupus. Typical clinical presentations tend to include arthritis/arthralgias, fever, weight loss, lymphadenopathy, serositis, si...

In summary, we have a woman in her 80's with AIHA, lymphadenopathy, and positive ANA/dsDNA/Coombs antibodies (I assume direct Coombs Ab is positive with her "warm" AIHA). You have done an excellent job of ruling out other common causes of AIHA (I'm sure you included checking for HIV, EBV, Hep C, and...

Excellent responses to this question - wanted to add a comment to please consider other mimics of SLE in your differential as you work through the case, particularly given her advanced age. For example, lymphoproliferative disorders (such as Castleman's) and hematologic malignancy can be associated ...