Prevalence of Sjögren’s syndrome in the general adult population in Spain: estimating the proportion of undiagnosed cases

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 10; no. 1; p. 10627
• Main Authors: Narváez, Javier, Sánchez-Fernández, Simón Ángel, Seoane-Mato, Daniel, Díaz-González, Federico, Bustabad, Sagrario
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 30.06.2020; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 692/308/174; 692/4023; 692/4023/1670; 692/700/1538; Adult; Female; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; multidisciplinary; Population; Population studies; Prevalence; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Sjogren's syndrome; Sjogren's Syndrome - diagnosis; Sjogren's Syndrome - epidemiology; Spain; Undiagnosed Diseases - epidemiology; Spain
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-67462-z

To estimate the prevalence of Sjögren’s syndrome (SS) in the adult Spanish population we performed a population-based multicenter cross-sectional study. Cases were defined by the American-European Consensus Group criteria proposed in 2002. A total of 4,916 subjects aged 20 years or over were included. The estimated prevalence of SS (including primary and secondary forms) in the adult population in Spain was 0.33% (95% CI 0.21–0.53). Extrapolating to the total population of the country aged ≥ 20 years (around 37.7 million persons), there would be around 125,000 cases of SS in Spain. Considering only primary SS, the estimated prevalence was 0.25% (95% CI 0.15–0.43) or 1 person in 400. The prevalence of primary SS in Spain is comparable to that reported in other European studies with a similar design and diagnostic criteria. Based on these results, primary SS could not be considered a rare (orphan) disease. Only 50% of cases had already been diagnosed with SS prior EPISER 2016 study, confirming the existence of a non-negligible proportion of undiagnosed cases in the general population.