Clinics and Practice 2011; volume 1:e89 Systemic lupus erythematosus- same patient. 1 Myositis (polymyositis PM or dermatomyositis DM) identifies a group of Correspondence: Faten Frikha, Department of myositis overlap syndrome: patients in whom the mascular weakness is Internal Medicine, Hospital of Hedi Chaker, 3029 report of 6 cases the principle clinical feature often associated Sfax, Tunisia. with muscle pain, tenderness and wasting, or E-mail:
[email protected] Fatma Maazoun, 1 Faten Frikha, 1 other form of connective tissue diseases; the Key words: overlap syndrome, systemic lupus ery - Mouna Snoussi, 1 Neila Kaddour, 1 muscle biopsy generally demonstrates areas of thematosus, myositis, classification criteria, cor - Hatem Masmoudi, 2 Zouhir Bahloul 1 muscle fibre necrosis accompanied by intersti - ticosteroid. tial and/or perivascular cellular infiltrates. 1Department of Internal Medicine, Received for publication: 22 September 2011. Myositis associated with overlap syndromes is Hospital of Hedi Chaker; 2Laboratory of Accepted for publication: 12 October 2011. usually of paroxysmal variety and has been immunology, Hospital Habib Bourguiba, associated with one or another of connective This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Sfax, Tunisia tissue disorders [Systemic Sclerosis (SSc), Attribution NonCommercial 3.0 License (CC BY- Rheumatoid arthritis (RA), Sjögren’s syn - NC 3.0). drome or systemic lupus erythematous (SLE)]. ©Copyright F. Maazoun et al., 2011 Pearson and Bohan found an incidence of 21% Licensee PAGEPress, Italy Abstract 2 of this type of myositis. Myositis is a rare com - Clinics and Practice 2011; 1:e89 plication of systemic lupus erythematous 3,4 doi:10.4081/cp.2011.e89 The incidence of myositis in patients with occurring in almost 4-16% of cases of SLE 3,5,6 systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is low and such association is considered to be an among different series.