الفهرس 
Aim of the workOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a heterogeneous
autoimmune disease of unknown etiology that mainly affects women in
the childbearing age. Infection is responsible for approximately 25% of
all deaths in patients with SLE, making it a leading cause of mortality
among patients. In the last few years various investigators have focused
their research on the clinical utility of neutrophil CD64 as a marker for
sepsis or systemic infection.
In the current work, we aimed to examine the usefulness of
neutrophil CD64 expression as a diagnostic marker to discriminate
disease activity from infection in patients with SLE.
The current work comprised 75 females distributed in four groups.
Group I: twenty apparently healthy females of matched age (control),
group II: twenty SLE patients without activity or infections (inactivity
group), group III: twenty SLE patients with lupus activity (SLEDAI score
≥ 12) admitted to the inpatient departments, (activity group) and group
IV: fifteen SLE patients, with diagnosed infection admitted to the
inpatient departments, (infection group).
All individuals were subjected to thorough history taking and
complete physical examination with stress on signs and symptoms of
SLE, lupus activity and infection if present. All individuals underwent the
following investigations; CBC, ESR, CRP, ANA, Anti-ds DNA and
CD64. Investigations to confirm infections were done to patients in the
infection group.