A New Study Has Identified A Root Cause Of Lupus And A Way To Potentially Reverse The Chronic Autoimmune Disease, Which Affects Over 1.5 Million People In The U.S.
Despite significant advances in medical research, the origins of many illnesses, such as lupus, remain shrouded in mystery.
In the United States, lupus affects more than 1.5 million people. It is a chronic autoimmune disease that takes place when the immune system attacks healthy organs and tissue.
Symptoms can come and go, ranging from mild to severe. Lupus can strike at various parts of the body, including the heart, skin, kidneys, joints, lungs, brain, and blood cells.
It can also result in life-threatening damage to multiple organs. So far, existing treatments have often failed to control the disease and are accompanied by harmful side effects.
Until now, scientists have been unsure of what contributed to the development of lupus. Researchers from Northwestern Medicine and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have made a major breakthrough. They discovered a root cause of lupus and a way to possibly reverse the disease.
“Up until this point, all therapy for lupus is a blunt instrument. It’s broad immunosuppression,” said Jaehyuk Choi, a co-author of the study, an associate professor of dermatology, and a dermatologist at Northwestern Medicine.
“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 authors determined that a molecular defect in the blood leads to lupus. Changes associated with the disease were found in multiple molecules in the blood of people with lupus. The changes resulted in insufficient activation of a pathway that the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) controls.
The AHR regulates how cells respond to bacteria, metabolites, and environmental pollutants. When the AHR experiences insufficient activation, too many disease-promoting cells called T peripheral helper cells are produced. These T cells will then attack healthy cells.
Gorodenkoff – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
“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,” said Deepak Rao, a co-author of the study, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a rheumatologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
To reach their findings, the researchers compared blood samples from 19 lupus patients with samples from healthy individuals.
They found that activating the AHR pathway with small molecule activators or blocking excess amounts of interferon in the blood can hinder the production of disease-causing cells.
If the effects of the methods are durable, perhaps they can be applied to all cases of lupus. The new study points to the possibility of improved treatments for lupus in the future.
The researchers plan to continue their work on developing safe and effective treatments for lupus patients.
According to Choi, the biggest challenge to developing a new treatment is to deliver molecules to people without activating AHRs throughout the whole body, which could trigger more side effects.
The study was published in the journal Nature.
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