The study by Chu et al (17) which was carried out on 80 patients with SLE and 40 healthy individuals, and the study of Wong et al (18) and Wong et al (19) shows that IL-18 may play a role in the complex pathogenesis of SLE (20,21), results of our study from this point of view comply with the results of similar studies. This evidence concerns the gene IL18 and systemic lupus erythematosus.