Study Finds Blood Precursors to Lupus
Posted on: Thursday, 16 October 2003, 06:00 CDT
BOSTON (AP) -- Researchers have found blood antibodies that can herald the symptoms of lupus years in advance, potentially helping point the way toward future treatments for the life-threatening immune disease.
"If we are able to identify a pathogen that triggers this process, then we could set to work on developing new strategies to stop that pathogen," said Dr. John Harley, the senior researcher at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation and University of Oklahoma.
The study team, which was supported by the National Institutes of Health and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, reported its findings Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.
The researchers identified 130 lupus patients - either soldiers or veterans - who had left blood samples in a military repository. They were matched with similar soldiers who did not develop lupus.
Before their diagnosis, 88 percent in the lupus group showed at least one autoantibody, an immune system protein that mistakenly attacks the body's own tissue during the course of lupus. They appeared up to nine years before the patients came down with the disease, suggesting that the process begins insidiously before symptoms become apparent.
About 4 percent of subjects without lupus showed the autoantibodies.
Dr. Robert Shmerling, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, cautioned in an accompanying commentary that such blood testing would prove of limited value in screening people for future cases of lupus. He said such autoantibodies, without visible symptoms of lupus, could point too often to other diseases or mean nothing at all.
An estimated 1.4 million Americans, mostly women, have lupus, a chronic disease that turns the body's immune defense system against its own healthy tissues. Many people afflicted also develop severe arthritis.
-----
On the Net:
Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation
More science, space, and technology from RedNova
Copyright © 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Related Articles
- New Data Shows Blood Pressure Reduction Therapy with BENICAR(R) and BENICAR HCT(R) Effectively Reduces Blood Pressure in Elderly Patients to Target Blood Pressure
- Society for Women's Health Research and MITA Promote Greater Awareness of Medical Imaging to Diagnose Women's Coronary Artery Disease
- Some Not-So-Obvious Symptoms of the Fragmentation Disease
- Researchers Identify New Drug Targets For Huntington's Disease
- New Report Measures the Impact of Nanotechnologies Currently Being Applied to Target Cancer, Cardiovascular Disease and CNS Disorders
- ROTATEQ(R) and GARDASIL(R) Adopted By All Immunization Projects of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Vaccines for Children (VFC) Program
- CVRx Receives Innovator of the Year Award; Company Recognized for Developing Implantable Medical Device to Treat High Blood Pressure
- China, US Medical Institutions to Join Hands in Heart Disease Project
- Galapagos and High Q Foundation Announce in Principle Agreement on 2.4 Million Alliance to Discover Drug Targets for Huntington Disease
- Immune system drug targets identified
 |
 |
User Comments (0)
RSS Feeds