Original articleIncidence of Leukocytoclastic Vasculitis, 1996 to 2010: A Population-Based Study in Olmsted County, Minnesota
Section snippets
Patients and Methods
The study was approved by both the Mayo Clinic and Olmsted Medical Center institutional review boards, Rochester, MN. We used the Rochester Epidemiology Project (REP) database to retrieve the medical records of all the skin biopsy–proven cases of LCV between January 1, 1996, and December 31, 2010.
The REP was founded in 1966 and is a comprehensive database that links the medical records of Olmsted County, MN, residents.4 It is a computerized index system that contains medical diagnoses that have
Patient Population
Between January 1, 1996, and December 31, 2010, a total of 405 patients were identified from the REP as having a coded diagnosis that included 1 or more of the terms used to conduct the initial query of the REP. After exclusion of patients who did not have skin histopathologic confirmation of the diagnosis or who denied research authorization, the final analysis comprised 84 patients with a new diagnosis of skin biopsy–proven LCV.
The mean age at diagnosis for the 84 incident cases of LCV was
Patient Population and Epidemiology of LCV
Our study may be the first population-based study of histopathologically defined LCV. We found no statistical difference in the incidence of LCV in male and female patients. Chua et al8 reported that female patients outnumbered male patients by 2:1 in their retrospective analysis of cutaneous vasculitis. However, other studies have found that the disorder is more common in men.9 Our study also found a statistically significant increase in the incidence of LCV with increased age at diagnosis (P
Conclusion
Our study found that the incidence of LCV is 45 cases per million, which is higher than what has been previously published in the literature. To our knowledge, this is the first population-based study of LCV, thus adding essential knowledge to our present understanding of this disease entity. Idiopathic LCV was more common in our population-based cohort than that described previously. Systemic involvement was present in nearly one-half of the patients, and approximately 30% of the patients with
Acknowledgments
We thank David F. Fiorentino, MD, Department of Dermatology, Stanford University, and Richard D. Sontheimer, MD, Department of Dermatology, University of Utah, for their helpful comments regarding the design of the study. They received no compensation.
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Grant Support: This study was made possible by the Rochester Epidemiology Project (grant number R01-AG034676; Principal Investigators: Walter A. Rocca, MD, MPH, and Barbara P. Yawn, MD, MSc).