Background/Purpose: Reporting of race and ethnicity as social constructs is critical to highlight equity and diversity of study participants, with the knowledge that socio-economic factors can affect systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) outcomes^1-3. Currently, reporting of race and ethnicity in rheumatology journals is not standardized. Studies often report majority White populations without discussing racial disparities or how inequities lead to worse outcomes⁴. Recent guidance on reporting of race and ethnicity by JAMA highlights the importance of specifying who identified participant race and ethnicity, including the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) minimum categories (American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black, or African American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and White), and reasons for assessing race. Reviewing current reporting practices on race and ethnicity in rheumatology journals is essential to potentially identify areas of improvement, especially in SLE which has high proportions of racial and ethnic disparities⁵. Here, we assess the reporting of race and ethnicity in recent high-impact rheumatology publications on SLE research to analyze for adherence to these reporting recommendations.

Methods: Using the Scimago Journal & Country Rank, we identified Annals of Rheumatic Diseases and Arthritis and Rheumatology as the two highest-ranked rheumatology journals according to the Scimago Journal Rank. We identified all studies involving human subject data published between January 2020 – December 2022 with at least one author based in the U.S. using the following search terms to identify our publications: systemic lupus erythematosus (Libman sacks or Libman-sacks), (lupus or lupovisceritis or erythematodes visceralis or SLE), (United Status or USA), “2020”, “2021”, “2022”. Manuscripts were excluded if they did not involve human subjects. A single researcher (I.E.) reviewed all studies on reporting of race, ethnicity, and various other socioeconomic variables.

Results: A total of 103 articles met our inclusion criteria and six studies were excluded. There were 24 prospective cohort studies, 22 retrospective cohort/case-control studies, 20 randomized control trials, 5 cross-sectional studies, 22 laboratory studies with patient samples, 9 genomic analyses using patient sequences, and one machine learning study using patient data. Among included studies, 96 (93%) included any demographic data, 70 (68%) reported race, 59 (57%) reported ethnicity. Of those that reported race, 56 (80%) had majority White participants and only 4 studies met OMB minimum reporting criteria for race. Only 13 studies (13%) mentioned that racial and ethnic categories were patient-reported. Additionally, we observed that 24 studies included any comorbidities and 16 studies included various other SES factors.

Conclusion: Reporting of race and ethnicity is not standardized across SLE research in high-impact rheumatology journals, and the majority of publications are not meeting the JAMA guidelines for reporting race and ethnicity.

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ACR Meeting Abstracts - https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/reporting-of-race-and-ethnicity-in-lupus-publications-in-high-impact-rheumatology-journals/