Alur S, Thabah MM, Sistla S, et al. - Given a lack of prospective data on infections in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) from India, researchers here examined hospitalized SLE patients for frequency and predictors of infections among them. Among 212 SLE patients (91% women) hospitalized during the study period, 63 (29.7%) had infections; pneumonia, skin and soft-tissue infections and urinary-tract infections were the most common ones. Higher mortality was reported in the infection group vs the no infection group (11.1% vs 0.7%). Logistic regression revealed the following as the predictors of infection: fever, vasculitis, thrombocytopaenia, presence of co-morbidities and duration of hospital stay > 11 days. Findings thereby suggest that infections are prevalent in 29.7% of Indian SLE patients who are hospitalized; which result in a significantly increased duration of hospital stay. This study once again confirmed the utility of high high-sensitivity CRP (hsCRP) for the diagnosis of infection in SLE. The infection group had significantly higher hsCRP compared with the no infection group (median 27 vs 6.5 mg/L). A hsCRP of 11.5 mg/L was identified to have a sensitivity of 66.7% and specificity of 72.9% to diagnose infection.