Objectives To asses the prevalence of infections in rheumatic diseases and study their risk factors.

Methods Retrospective study conducted on algerien patients’ medical files with inflammatory rheumatic diseases admitted from January, 2009 to June, 2011 in BenAknoun hospital in Algeria. Demographic and clinical data were recorded. A current or past infection was looked for by precising the type of infection, its location, and its gravity. A severe infection was defined as a tuberculous infection or an infection other than tubercular but motivating admission to the hospital.

Results One hundred and sixty five algerien patients with chronic inflammatory rheumatic diseases were admitted (96 rheumatoid arthritis, 17 systemic erythematosus lupus, 15 systemic sclerodermas, 13 Sjögren’s syndrome, 9 JIA, 1 primary Hughes syndrome, 2 Reynolds syndromes, 6 dermatomyositis, 3 mixed connective diseases, 2 Behçet diseases and 1 Still disease. There were 132 women and 33 men, average age 43.1±16.1 years, evolution duration 7.1±6.8 years. All patients were treated with glucocorticoids for more than 3 months and among them, 26,7% received an equivalent of prednisone >10mg/d. Global prevalence of the infectious events was 30,3%, 30,2% for RA and 30,4% for the other diseases. The most frequent locations were lung (24%) and urinary (10%) infections as well as tuberculosis (10%).

Conclusions Infections in connective tissue diseases are frequent and involve approximately 1/3 the patients, severe infection involves about 10% of the patients. Age is associated with more infectious events; males are associated with severe infections. Lupus is the most associated disease with infections.

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Disclosure of Interest None Declared