Lupus News

Lupus, a chronic inflammatory disease, occurs when an individual’s immune system attacks its tissues and organs. Inflammation caused by lupus can affect the joints, skin, kidneys, blood cells, brain, heart and lungs. The inflammatory disease may be difficult to diagnose as symptoms sometimes mimic signs of other ailments and diseases.

Cerebrovascular events — particularly stroke and transient ischemia — are the fourth most common neuropsychiatric event in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus, and are typically attributable to the disease, according to findings published in Arthritis Care and Research.

Healio Rheumatology has compiled a list of the top four stories from the American College of Rheumatology Annual Meeting.

The first phase of drafting new classification criteria for systemic lupus erythematosus, undertaken by the American College of Rheumatology and EULAR, produced 40 candidate criteria for subsequent assessment, according to findings recently published in Arthritis Care and Research.

Consensus treatment plans can help reduce variation in treatment approaches, identify effective treatment strategies and standardize outcomes for pediatric patients with rheumatic diseases, according to a recent review published in Arthritis & Rheumatology.

Data published in Arthritis Research and Therapy suggest that mixed connective tissue disease is a relatively stable disease with infrequent periods of long-term remission.

Several flare score systems adequately assessed the majority of flares in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus, according to findings published in Arthritis Care and Research.

The complement activation product C4d can be used to monitor patients with systemic lupus erythematosus, as these levels correlate with disease activity and could potentially predict lupus nephritis flares, according to findings published in Arthritis Research and Care.

Although patients with incomplete lupus erythematosus characteristically present with milder symptoms, some patients develop more serious clinical manifestations requiring more aggressive immunomodulatory therapy, according to findings published in Arthritis Care and Research.

SAN DIEGO — At the American College of Rheumatology Annual Meeting, Ashira Blazer, MD, discussed a study in which the researchers hypothesized that cytokine-induced risk variant expression impairs autophagy, favoring pore formation endothelial cells, implicating endothelial dysfunction as a cause for broader organ damage. According to Blazer, interferon gamma increases both ancestral and variant APOL1 intracellular accumulation in cultured endothelial cells across genotype. Among risk variant carrying endothelial cells, this results in abnormal autophagy, angiogenesis and mitochondrial energy production, contributing to endothelial dysfunction.