In patients with verified diagnosis of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE)without any topical signs of central nervous system impairment, the visual, brainstem auditory, somatosensory, and motor evoked potentials were performed. Small hyperintensive lesions supra- and infratentorial in white matter were detected by MRI.We found and abnormal median cortical response and absence and/or shortening of silent period after transcranial magnetic stimulationwhich we interpreted as a slight dysfunction of supraspinal and/or cortical somatosensory generator of inhibitory interneurons in the motor cortex. Multimodal evoked potentials could become a useful electrophysiological method to detect subclinical central nervous impairment in SLE.

        Key words: vasculitis, systemic lupus erythematosus, evoked potentials, somatosensory evoked potentials, motor evoked potentials, lupus cephalgia