الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
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. |