Researchers may have found the cause of lupus with ways of reversing the disease
(Gray News) - Researchers say they’ve discovered a root cause of lupus, a disease that affects hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S.
According to Northwestern Medicine, scientists have discovered a molecular defect that promotes the pathologic immune response in systemic lupus erythematosus, known as lupus.
A study published in the journal Nature shows that reversing this defect may potentially reverse the disease.
Medical experts say until this new study, the causes of the disease were unclear. Lupus can result in life-threatening damage to multiple organs including the kidneys, brain and heart.
“Up until this point, all therapy for lupus is a blunt instrument. It’s broad immunosuppression,” Jaehyuk Choi, a medical doctor and a Northwestern Medicine dermatologist, said. “By identifying a cause for this disease, we have found a potential cure that will not have the side effects of current therapies.”
The study outlines how lupus likely develops, pointing to abnormalities in the immune systems of people with the disease.
“We’ve identified a fundamental imbalance in the immune responses that patients with lupus make, and we’ve defined specific mediators that can correct this imbalance to dampen the pathologic autoimmune response,” Deepak Rao, a medical doctor and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said.
Researchers shared that the study arrived at its findings by comparing blood samples from patients with lupus to blood samples from those without the autoimmune disease.
The comparison reportedly showed that people with lupus have too much of a particular T cell, called the T peripheral helper cells, that promote the production of disease-causing autoantibodies.
But doctors shared they may have found a way to reduce such disease-causing cells.
“We found that if we either activate the AHR pathway with small molecule activators or limit the pathologically excessive interferon in the blood, we can reduce the number of these disease-causing cells,” Choi said.
Medical teams from Northwestern Medicine and Brigham and Women’s Hospital worked on the study. They said they want to expand their efforts into developing novel treatments for lupus patients and are working to find ways to deliver these molecules safely and effectively to people.
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