Pulmonary Sarcoidosis: Prognostic Factors at Diagnosis in Patients from North of Portugal

Background: Sarcoidosis is a multisystemic granulomatous disease that affects the lungs in more than 90% of the patients. It is associated with a variable clinical course and considering all the different forms of disease presentation, there are an absence of reliable clinical prognostic markers that can predict the outcome at diagnosis. Objective: The aim of our study was to investigate prognostic factors at diagnosis in a population of sarcoidosis patients from Northern Portugal. Methods: A group of 110 patients with chronic evolution was compared with 129 patients with disease resolution regarding their clinical, radiologic and laboratorial features. Results: We found a positive association between the chronic forms and lung function impairment, radiologic stage II, lower lymphocyte CD4/CD8 and extrapulmonary disease. Löfgren syndrome and asthenia instead had a protective significant association to chronicity. Our final logistic regression model found a significant independent association between age (adjusted OR = 1.06), extrapulmonary involvement (adjusted OR = 2.68), Löfgren's syndrome (adjusted OR = 0.15) with outcome toward chronicity. Conclusions: In this first study searching for prognostic factors at diagnosis in a Northern Portuguese population, we found clinical prognosis factors that have been described in other populations that should be considered whenever sarcoidosis is identified.