Remission in SLE was shown to be associated with better outcome and prolonged survival; in clinical practice, patients may experience either complete or clinical remission, which are defined as complete clinical/serological healing or no clinical signs of lupus with active serology, respectively. The main treat-to-target in SLE is complete remission, however since longitudinal observations suggest that clinical remission or low disease activity even with minimal corticosteroid intake do improve patients prognosis and survival as well, they may be assumed as acceptable alternative targets.
Suitable therapeutic strategies have to be defined in order for these goals to be achieved including early diagnosis, effective treatment and proper corticosteroid tapering which in turn require development of more reliable serum biomarkers for early disease detection and less toxic targeted therapies with a steroid-sparing potential.