ABC News recently published their Top 5 2024 medical breakthroughs and included was the discovery on a cause of Lupus.
“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 co-corresponding author Dr. Deepak Rao, a rheumatologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and co-director of its Center for Cellular Profiling.
The full study, which is very technical, was published in Nature and here is a summary in more accessible language on the findings :
Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a complex autoimmune disease where the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks its own tissues and SLE patients show an unusual balance of different types of T cells (AKA white blood cells).
The study found an increased numbers of CXCL13-producing T cells a decreased numbers of IL-22-producing T cells. The study found that a protein called AHR (aryl hydrocarbon receptor) plays a crucial role with the impact on the T Cells as follows:
AHR, working with another protein called JUN, prevents T cells from becoming CXCL13-producing cells. Instead, AHR and JUN promote the development of IL-22-producing T cells.
This may explain why there are more CXCL13-producing T cells in SLE patients.
Significance
This research reveals a delicate balance between different T cell types in the immune system and how it’s disrupted in SLE. Understanding these mechanisms could potentially lead to new treatments for SLE by targeting the proteins involved in regulating T cell behavior.
