الفهرس 
AcknowledgementOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic systemic disease affecting mostly women of child-bearing age (Hanle et al., 2010). Apoptosis is one of several important mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of SLE. A previous study has demonstrated that lymphocyte apoptosis is increased and removal of apoptotic cells is impaired in SLE. Furthermore, apoptosis is higher in active SLE compared to inactive SLE (Jin et al., 2005).
Our study included 60 subjects, divided into three groups, each of which contains 20 subjects. The first group included 20 SLE patients with active disease; the second group included 20 patients with inactive SLE and the third group included 20 healthy volunteers.
Comparing the three study groups regarding the sex, there was female predominance in the three groups and they were sex matched with no significant difference between the three groups. All of the participants of our study groups were in the middle age, with a mean age of nearly 27-28 years, with no significant difference between the three groups.
As expected, the SLE disease activity index (SLEDAI) was much higher in the active SLE group than the inactive SLE group, and much lower in the healthy control group.
We found that, all of the three apoptosis markers used in our research (namely; FAS, Annexin and CD38) were significantly much higher among active SLE cases; followed by SLE inactive cases and lowest among control subjects. Using post-HOC tests to compare each two individual groups, we found a highly significant difference between SLE active cases and both of the SLE inactive cases and control subjects; and a significant difference between SLE inactive cases and control subjects regarding all of these markers.
Comparing apoptosis markers with SLEDAI among SLE active cases, we found moderate, positive and significant to highly significant correlations between SLEDAI and all of the markers; which means that the expression of apoptotic markers and hence the activity of apoptosis process is highly associated with the disease activity among SLE active cases. Comparing apoptosis markers with SLEDAI among all SLE cases, we found strong, positive and highly significant correlations between SLEDAI and all of the markers.
Conclusion
from this study we can conclude that apoptosis is significantly higher in patients with SLE compared to control subjects and correlates well with the disease activity among SLE patients.