Only one new drug has become available over the past 50 years for the estimated 1.5 million Americans and five million-plus people worldwide suffering from lupus, but new research has identified a previously unknown mechanism involved in the immune response that could provide an alternative therapy target.
Lupus (also known as systemic lupus erythematosus) is a chronic autoimmune disease in which the immune system is unable to distinguish the difference between foreign invaders, such as viruses and bacteria, from its own healthy body tissue, so it attacks itself, damaging skin, joints, and kidneys - among other organs - in the process. The disease is also marked by elevated levels of type I interferon, a substance normally secreted by immune cells in response to viral infections. The origin of the interferon signature in lupus has remained a mystery for years.
While working to solve this enigma, researchers, including Iwona Buskiewicz, Ph.D., and Andreas Koenig, Ph.D., assistant professors of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Vermont's Larner College of Medicine, uncovered an unexpected finding: a protein that normally signals an immune system pathway during viral infections was spontaneously activated in lupus patients, even in the absence of viral infection.
