a slight trendP < 0.1
Significantly, there was a giant decrease in the level of total androgens in patients with SLE (P < 0.05), and there was a slight trend of elevation in total estrogens (P < 0.1, Figure 3 ). 3.5 Screening of altered steroid species in patients with SLE To reveal the specific alterations of steroids in patients with SLE, PLS-DA was conducted to compare the steroid profiles between two groups after OSC filtration.