More Targeted Treatments for Lupus Nephritis: Is the Future (Nearly) Here?

[摘要] The adaptive arm of the immune system confers substantially increased power, specificity, and memory to the arsenal with which we control infection. However, it brings increased complexity and the potential for antigens irrelevant to infectious threats to induce damaging immune responses. The consequences of significant reactivity to innocuous environmental antigens or self-antigens are allergy or autoimmunity. Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), the prototypic systemic autoimmune disease, results from losing tolerance to a range of self-antigens, particularly nuclear proteins. The potentially life-threatening and relapsing expression of disease makes more severe forms of SLE a debilitating condition from which to suffer. Standard treatments for severe, diffuse, proliferative lupus nephritis lack specificity and have a significant side-effect profile. Two studies in this issue of JASN may point the way toward more specific therapies for this disease (1,2).

[学科分类] 泌尿医学

[关键词] Bone marrow necrosis;Sickle cell disease;Hyperhemolysis syndrome