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Scientists discover a cause of lupus, possible way to reverse it

news.feinberg.northwestern.edu

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Re: Scientists discover a cause of lupus, possible way to reverse it

#11

Post by kylehotchkiss »

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #4

Autoimmune 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…

I have a good feeling we're going to make a fairly big impact on cancer in our lifetimes with mRNA and other new discoveries in our lifetime. Autoimmune issues I'm feeling much less confident about. It seems like so many of the therapies are "turn down the immune system". I wish there was wider study into autoimmune derived mental health complications too. Maybe I'm totally wrong on this (and I'm very OK to be proven wrong) but maybe there's something to find here.

Re: Scientists discover a cause of lupus, possible way to reverse it

#12

Post by BenFranklin100 »

atombender wrote: post #8
BenFranklin100 wrote: post #4

Autoimmune 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. I…

Great comment, thanks. I’m looking forward to reading the paper.

Re: Scientists discover a cause of lupus, possible way to reverse it

#13

Post by elcritch »

trhway wrote: post #7

On 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…

Both reactions make sense to me. Too much AHR activation suppresses immune response leading to cancer proliferation due immune cells not culling cancerous cells, but too little leads to auto-immune conditions. It's definitely like a large sloppy code base with lots of implicit overlaps and global effects.

Re: Scientists discover a cause of lupus, possible way to reverse it

#14

Post by avgDev »

ipunchghosts wrote: post #2

I wonder if any of these findings help us better understand me/cfs.

I've encountered an individual who had fibro, me/cfs, pots diagnosis. Turns out his small nerve fibers were fried by an antibiotic. His skin punch biopsy showed reduced fibers. This may not be the case in everyone, but SFN is extremely under diagnosed.

He was a chemist, and he ended up healing all his symptoms with pirenzepine. If I recall correctly they did the skin punch biopsy again and his physician was stunned when they saw regrowth of the fibers.

Today, WinSanTor is in stage 3 trials with their drug. They designed a cream with main ingredient being pirenzepine. They are targeting diabetes but the med appears to work for small nerve fibers as well.

Small nerve fibers control so much that any time people have weird unexplained symptoms it should be explored.

Re: Scientists discover a cause of lupus, possible way to reverse it

#15

Post by wizzwizz4 »

elcritch wrote: post #13
trhway wrote: post #7

On 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…

Both reactions make sense to me. Too much AHR activation suppresses immune response leading to cancer proliferation due immune cells not culling cancerous cells, but too little leads to auto-immune conditions. It's definitely like a large sloppy code base with lots of implicit overlaps and global effects.

If all you have is a hysteresis, everything looks like a chemical imbalance.

Re: Scientists discover a cause of lupus, possible way to reverse it

#17

Post by roywiggins »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #11
BenFranklin100 wrote: post #4

Autoimmune 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…

I have a good feeling we're going to make a fairly big impact on cancer in our lifetimes with mRNA and other new discoveries in our lifetime. Autoimmune issues I'm feeling much less confident about. It seems like so many of the therapies are "turn down the immune system". I wish there was wider study into autoimmune derived mental health complications too. Maybe I'm totally wrong on this (and I'm very OK to be proven…

There is evidence that inflammation is among the causes of depression:

https://wapo.st/3xHLze1

> pro-inflammatory drugs can induce people to become depressed, which suggests a causative link. In one seminal study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Miller and his colleagues conducted a double-blind study of 40 cancer patients undergoing treatment with interferon-alpha, an inflammatory cytokine.

> Though none of the patients had depression to begin with, the inflammatory agent had a striking effect: Many became depressed, a finding that has been consistently replicated.

Re: Scientists discover a cause of lupus, possible way to reverse it

#20

Post by shepherdjerred »

nadermx wrote: post #18
beekaywhopper wrote: post #10

script writers for House are shaking in their boots

"You stash your drugs in a lupus textbook?" "It's never lupus"

Every Time “It’s Not Lupus”

https://youtube.com/watch?v=uXOxXnZoYGQ

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