Scientists discover a cause of lupus, possible way to reverse it
news.feinberg.northwestern.edu
Scientists discover a cause of lupus, possible way to reverse it
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Re: Scientists discover a cause of lupus, possible way to reverse it
#2I wonder if any of these findings help us better understand me/cfs.
Re: Scientists discover a cause of lupus, possible way to reverse it
#3I wonder if any of these findings help us better understand me/cfs.
It has been my hope that the number of me/cfs cases would finally drive enough research into autoimmune disorders in general, that we might finally figure it out. It seems very poorly understood from an outside perspective.
Re: Scientists discover a cause of lupus, possible way to reverse it
#4Autoimmune diseases, of which lupus is but one of many, are essentially black boxes. It’s proven extraordinarily difficult to develop therapies in this area. As such, this is great news. Hopefully this research will encourage pharmaceutical and biotech companies to invest more resources into translating research findings into effective therapies.
I haven’t read the paper yet, so I can’t comment on how this discovery might generalize to other autoimmune diseases, but one interesting bit about autoimmune diseases is that they tend to run in packs. This is suggestive there may be underlying mechanisms that are shared across autoimmune diseases.
Re: Scientists discover a cause of lupus, possible way to reverse it
#5I wonder if any of these findings help us better understand me/cfs.
Maybe but the immune dysfunction goes further in ME/CFS its not just a problem of reduced CD4 and heightened CD8 (which are the two cell types they seem to be talking about) its a wider set of oddities that seem related to exhausted cells with not enough energy stuck in "there is infection near by" operation mode. It might help reduce symptoms that are caused by the imbalance so it would certainly be worth a trial when they work out the details.
Re: Scientists discover a cause of lupus, possible way to reverse it
#6I wonder if any of these findings help us better understand me/cfs.
It has been my hope that the number of me/cfs cases would finally drive enough research into autoimmune disorders in general, that we might finally figure it out. It seems very poorly understood from an outside perspective.
There is no funding and since Long Covid appeared the funding for ME/CFS has completely vanished. If Long Covid ME like illness is the same then ME/CFS is getting lots of research right now, on the other hand if they turn out to be different ME/CFS patients are getting completely ignored.
Re: Scientists discover a cause of lupus, possible way to reverse it
#7On one side we have in this article :
" insufficient activation of a pathway controlled by the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR), which regulates cells’ response to environmental pollutants, bacteria or metabolites. Insufficient activation of AHR results in too many disease-promoting immune cells, called the T peripheral helper cells, that promote the production of disease-causing autoantibodies.
To show this discovery can be leveraged for treatments, the investigators returned the aryl hydrocarbon receptor-activating molecules to blood samples from lupus patients. This seemed to reprogram these lupus-causing cells into a cell called a Th22 cell that may promote wound healing from the damage caused by this autoimmune disease.
“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,”
On the other side quick search on AHR activation brings for example cancer related stuff like this :
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10570930/
"AHR activation to promote tumor cell intrinsic malignant properties and to suppress anti-tumor immune responses [14], [17], [18]. Specifically, the AHR drives cancer cell migration, invasion, and survival, regulates cell cycle progression and promotes cancer stem cell characteristics [14], [19], [20], [21], [22]. Simultaneously, it inhibits anti-tumor immunity "
Human body by its complexity and our lack of understanding of it sometimes reminds the codebases i've worked on :)
In that rabbit hole of articles on AHR there is also :
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41423-020-00585-5
"The aryl hydrocarbon receptor and the gut–brain axis"
which in particular discusses what looks to me (i'm not a doctor) like a connection/correlation : gut microbes -> AHR -> glioblastoma.
Re: Scientists discover a cause of lupus, possible way to reverse it
#8Autoimmune diseases, of which lupus is but one of many, are essentially black boxes. It’s proven extraordinarily difficult to develop therapies in this area. As such, this is great news. Hopefully this research will encourage pharmaceutical and biotech companies to invest more resources into translating research findings into effective therapies. I haven’t read the paper yet, so I can’t comment on how this discovery…
The aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR), which is key to this discovery, appears to be super relevant to psoriasis, another autoimmune disease.
AhR has been known for a long time, but it seems it's been somewhat mysterious until a series of recent breakthroughs. In 2022, an AhR inhibitor called tapinarof, sold as VTAMA, was launched, and has shown itself to be one of the most effective treatments for psoriasis to date. It's also unique in that it appears to have the ability to bring lasting remission. In the main clinical trial, patients who used VTAMA for one year and then stopped had a mean remission duration of 4 months until their psoriasis returned. That is unheard of for any topical medication used on psoriasis.
Blocking AhR has also shown promise in treating MS [1].
I haven't read the lupus paper, but often with papers like these, the "cause" turns out not to be the actual origin, but some cytokine or other protein that is more disease-specific than current drug targets. This lupus discovery appears to identify an imbalance that may be compensated for, but we still don't know what triggers the imbalance in the first place.
In some cases diseases turn out to be a genetic fault, but my money is on pathogens acting as the initial triggering event, which then spins the immune system into a vicious cycle of autoimmunity. In psoriasis we see this with strep bacteria, for example, but the exact mechanisms are not well understood. However, the mechanism that makes psoriasis chronic has been identified, a type of T-cell called a tissue-resident memory (TRM) T-cell. This type of cell acts as a kind of biological memory for infections.
[1] https://newsroom.uvahealth.com/2023/02/15/multiple-sclerosis...
Re: Scientists discover a cause of lupus, possible way to reverse it
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
It has been my hope that the number of me/cfs cases would finally drive enough research into autoimmune disorders in general, that we might finally figure it out. It seems very poorly understood from an outside perspective.
There is no funding and since Long Covid appeared the funding for ME/CFS has completely vanished. If Long Covid ME like illness is the same then ME/CFS is getting lots of research right now, on the other hand if they turn out to be different ME/CFS patients are getting completely ignored.
Many ME experts are doing both. RECOVER is considering adding ME/CFS arms to its huge clinical trial platform. UCSF just added ME/CFS as a priority in their LIINC program.
SARS-CoV-2 therapeutics won’t work on both but immune cell based ones may given they haven’t been tested in either yet.
Both suggest a root cause of persistent viral antigen. Time will tell what works here.
Re: Scientists discover a cause of lupus, possible way to reverse it
#10script writers for House are shaking in their boots