Hydroxychloroquine might reduce risk of incident endometriosis in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus: A retrospective population-based cohort study

Fang-Yu Chen, Shuo-Wei Chen, Shuo‐Wei Chen, Xinpeng Chen, Jing‐Yang Huang, Zhizhong Ye, James Cheng-Chung Wei, James Cheng‐Chung Wei
Lupus · 2021 · vol. 30(10) , pp. 1609–1616 · doi:10.1177/09612033211031009 · PMID:34259057 · W3182126890
article OA: closed CC0 ⤵ 1 in-corpus citation
View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

Systemic lupus erythematosus patients treated with hydroxychloroquine showed a reduced risk of developing endometriosis compared to those on lower doses.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

BACKGROUND: SLE, which is common in women, is commonly treated with HCQ, an anti-inflammation medication. Reproductive-age women with SLE are prone to be impacted by endometriosis. This study analyzes the relationship between HCQ and endometriosis patients with SLE in order to determine whether HCQ is effective for treating the latter. METHODS: This population-based, retrospective cohort study analyzed the SLE risk in a cohort of newly diagnosed SLE patients with endometriosis during 2000 through 2013. Controls were selected at a 1:2 ratio through age-matching using the greedy algorithm. The Cox proportional hazard model was used to analyze the association between HCQ use and endometriosis incidence. Four different Cox regression models were used. Lastly, sensitivity analysis with PSOW and IPW was implemented to evaluate the hazard ratio (HR) of endometriosis after exposure with HCQ. RESULTS: In the cohort where age and sex matched high and low HCQ dosage, the average follow-up time was about 1 year. The cohort's overall incidence rates of endometriosis were 44.54 and 90.03 per 100000 person-month for high and low dosage respectively. The high dose group's conditional hazard ratio (aHR) for incidental endometriosis was 0.482 (CI = 0.191 to 1.213). The incidence rate and Kaplan-Meir curves of endometriosis were consistent with the results for the cohort. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrated that SLE patients continuously treated with HCQ have a lower risk of developing endometriosis. Clinically, HCQ can be beneficial for endometriosis patients with SLE.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

mesh:D004715endometriosis

MeSH descriptors

Antirheumatic Agents Antirheumatic Agents Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Lupus Erythematosus, Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, Systemic Cohort Studies Female Humans Hydroxychloroquine Hydroxychloroquine Retrospective Studies

Citation neighborhood

Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. [ expand to 2 hops ] — adds papers reached through this work's immediate citers/citees. Heavier; up to 60 extra dots.

References (38)

Cited by (1)

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-06-04T01:30:01.192114+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-06-04T00:00:01.174412+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-05-13T22:24:31.988741+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK