To determine the annual incidence of primary Sjögren's syndrome (pSS) in Slovenia.
All patients admitted to our department of rheumatology or referred to our outpatient clinic between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2002 owing to sicca symptoms or because of a suspicion of SS were examined. Our rheumatological department is the only tertiary referral centre for the Ljubljana region, which has a population of 599 895 Caucasian people. All patients were evaluated by the validated European criteria for SS. The exact 95% confidence interval (CI) based on binomial distribution was created for the incidence estimate.
248 patients were examined; 71 of them (28.6%; 65 women, 6 men) were diagnosed as having pSS. Their mean (SD) age was 51.3 (14.5) years (range 19-78). The average annual incidence for pSS in our study population was calculated as 3.9 cases per 100 000 inhabitants (95% CI 1.1 to 10.2).
The estimated annual incidence of pSS in Slovenia is 3.9/100 000.