Lupus News

Faced with an increasing incidence and prevalence of autoimmune disease in the United States —approximately 23.5 million Americans are affected across the country, according to the NIH — Bonnie Feldman, MBA, DDS, says it is time to acknowledge what she calls “an invisible epidemic.”

Patients with lupus demonstrate characteristic gut microbiome dysbiosis patterns, which appear to directly correspond to disease activity, according to data published in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Despite a series of recent clinical setbacks, the latest in “a very large and growing graveyard” for systemic lupus erythematosus research, Gregg J. Silverman, MD, professor of medicine and pathology at NYU School of Medicine, highlighted potential therapeutic candidates that have achieved early successes.

Researchers have developed a novel, seemingly highly accurate index for measuring improvement in juvenile systemic lupus erythematosus over time, representing an international consensus on a definition of “clinically relevant improvement” among children and adolescents with the disease, according to recent findings in Arthritis Care & Research.

Patients with systemic lupus erythematosus treated with belimumab, plus the standard of care, demonstrated significantly less organ damage progression compared with those who received the standard of care alone, according to findings published in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.

In this guest episode, Leonard Calabrese, DO, provides the history of systemic lupus erythematosus, with special emphasis on the discovery of the LE cell and the two clinics involved in its detection.

Patients with lupus nephritis-related end-stage renal disease who received a renal transplant demonstrated a significant reduction in overall mortality, according to findings published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Splashy headlines in the mainstream media that proclaim advances in medicine are often not what they seem. That may be the case with a recent series of FDA approvals surrounding the direct-to-consumer genetic testing platform, 23andMe.

Omalizumab is well tolerated and associated with improved disease activity in patients with systematic lupus erythematosus, according to data published in Arthritis & Rheumatology.

Richard Furie, MD, is chief, division of rheumatology, at Northwell Health, and professor of medicine at Hofstra/Northwell School of Medicine. Join us in this ACR interview, as we discuss the story of interferon, lupus therapeutics — including B cell depletion — and the future of lupus research and treatments.