الفهرس 
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Abstract
Background : Systemic lupus erythematosus is a chronic multisystem autoimmune disease of unkown etiology. Different systems of the body including skin, musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, renal and central nervous system can be involved in SLE. Infections appear to be a major cause of morbidity, mortality and one of the major complications in patients with SLE and responsible for 20-40% of death in lupus patients. Culture is the ‘gold standard’ for detection of fungal infections but displays low sensitivity. PCR can reach a diagnosis at an early stage of infection, precipitating earlier treatment, but cultures often become positive at an advanced, sometimes incurable, disease stage . Aim: 1. Determination of prevelance of different aetiological causes of IFI in SLE patients. 2. Comparing the diagnostic performance of fungal PCR to that of conventional culture to diagnose invasive fungal infection in SLE patients. Setting: Mycology and Genetic unit at the Medical Microbiology and Immunology Department, Faculty of Medicine, Mansoura University. Results: In comparison between culture and PCR there was no significant difference regarding the results. All the two methods were evaluated individually, the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and, negative predictive values. The result shows that specificity of PCR was higher than culture but sensitivity of both the same Conclusion: prevalence of invasive fungal infection in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus, was lower than that reported in other studies done in this field. PCR results may be used as supportive evidence for the presence of an invasive fungal infection. Although difference between the PCR and culture did not reach the level of significance, but we showed PCR had a higher value than culture regarding the specificity.