Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0024141 (systemic lupus erythematosus)
 44,322 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Among 165 patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), we observed 21 pregnancies in 19 patients since 1987. The mean duration of disease at the time of pregnancy was 4.5 +/- 3 years. All but three patients required immunosuppressive treatment before and during pregnancy. The effect of pregnancy on the course of SLE was studied. Severe disease exacerbations were rare and largely confined to patients with renal involvement. Most patients showed elevated titers of dsDNA antibodies during pregnancy but clinical activity of disease was usually mild. Complement C3 decrease appeared to be the most sensitive marker for pregnancy-related complications. The detection of antibodies to phospholipids was frequent during pregnancy in contrast to a low prevalence before and after pregnancy. Their presence could be associated with intrauterine growth retardation. Preterm delivery before the 37th week of pregnancy had to be performed in the majority of patients. None of the patients experienced abortion although three patients had to delivered in the 29th week of pregnancy because of increasing symptoms of pre-eclampsia. Two of these children died and the third child suffered from intracranial hemorrhage in the early postpartum period. Our data demonstrate that successful pregnancy outcome was related to a gestational age of more than 32 weeks, making careful monitoring and appropriate therapeutic management necessary.
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PMID:Pregnancy course and complications in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus. 128 79

Flaxseed is rich in alpha-linolenic acid (alpha-LA) which has anti-atherogenic properties, and lignans which are platelet activating factor (PAF)-receptor antagonists. These constituents of flaxseed, and its beneficial effects in the MRL/lpr lupus mouse prompted us to perform this dosing study in lupus nephritis patients. Nine patients were enrolled, eight of whom completed the study. After the baseline studies, patients were given 15, 30, and 45 g of flaxseed/day sequentially at four week intervals, followed by a five-week washout period. Compliance, disease activity, blood pressure, plasma lipids, rheology, PAF-induced platelet aggregation, renal function, and serum immunology were assessed. Flaxseed-sachet count and a significant increase of serum alpha-LA indicated good compliance for 15 and 30 g doses. Total and LDL cholesterol, and blood viscosity were significantly reduced with 30 g and to a lesser extent 45 g doses. PAF-induced platelet aggregation was inhibited by all doses. There was a significant decline in serum creatinine with 30 and 45 g, and a concomitant increase in creatinine clearance with increasing flaxseed dose. Proteinuria was reduced with 30 g and to a lesser extent with 45 g of flaxseed. Complement C3 was significantly elevated by all three doses. CD11b expression on neutrophils, a measure of C3bi receptors, was significantly reduced with the 30 g dose. In conclusion, 30 g flaxseed/day was well tolerated and conferred benefit in terms of renal function as well as inflammatory and atherogenic mechanisms important in the pathogenesis of lupus nephritis.
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PMID:Flaxseed: a potential treatment for lupus nephritis. 756 15

We report a case of systemic lupus erythematosus associated with C1q deficiency. Our patient presented at the age of 6 years with cutaneous lupus. She later developed Raynaud's phenomenon, non-scarring alopecia, oral ulceration and grand mal seizures due to cerebral vasculitis. Complement C3 and C4 levels were consistently normal during flares of her lupus and haemolytic activity of her complement was absent, suggesting a deficiency of an early component of the complement cascade. No C1q could be detected.
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PMID:Systemic lupus erythematosus with C1q deficiency. 1073 63

Associations of different assays for antibodies to C1q (anti-C1q) and to dsDNA (anti-dsDNA) and of complements C3 and C4 with disease activity in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) were studied. The clinical manifestations of 223 SLE patients were recorded, and the disease activity was assessed by the SLEDAI score. Anti-C1q were determined by two enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) and anti-dsDNA by a radioimmunoassay (RIA), a Crithidia immunofluorescence (IF) assay and three ELISA assays using human telomere DNA, plasmid DNA circles, or calf thymus DNA as antigens, respectively. Complement C3 and C4 were determined by nephelometry. Control sera were obtained from 98 blood donors. In patients with SLE, the prevalence of anti-C1q was 17-18% and that of anti-dsDNA was 36-69%. Anti-C1q, anti-dsDNA, and complement C3 and C4 correlated well with the overall activity of SLE (r = 0.323-0.351, 0.353-0.566, and -0.372-0.444, respectively; P < 0.001). Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value for active lupus nephritis among SLE patients were 40-44, 92, 29, and 91-92% for anti-C1q and 48-68, 29-66, 11-16, and 86-91% for anti-dsDNA, respectively. Patients with active nephritis had higher levels of anti-C1q and lower levels of C3 and C4 than patients with inactive nephritis (P = 0.003-0.018). The corresponding associations of anti-dsDNA were somewhat weaker (P = 0.023-0.198). Hematological parameters reflecting disease activity correlated clearly better with anti-dsDNA and complement C3 and C4 than with anti-C1q. Anti-C1q is inferior to anti-dsDNA as a diagnostic test in SLE and in the evaluation of overall clinical activity of the disease. Anti-C1q together with complement C3 and C4 may offer useful additional information to monitor lupus nephritis activity. There are no practical differences between different assays for anti-C1q and anti-dsDNA.
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PMID:Nonrenal and renal activity of systemic lupus erythematosus: a comparison of two anti-C1q and five anti-dsDNA assays and complement C3 and C4. 2170 94

Systemic lupus erythematosus is characterized by dysfunctional clearance of apoptotic debris and the development of pathogenic autoantibodies. While the complement system is also involved in the disease no attempt has been made to generate a comprehensive view of immune complex formation from various autoantigens. We increased the complexity of autoantibody profiles by measuring the binding of two complement proteins, C3 and C4, in addition to two antibody classes, IgG and IgM, to a collection of autoantigens. These complement components covalently bind to those microarray features where antibodies and other serum components induce complement activation. Using this technology, we compared functional serum antibody profiles of control subjects (n = 31) and patients with lupus erythematosus (n = 61) in the active (n = 22) and inactive (n = 39) phase of the disease. Multivariate analysis was applied to identify contributions of binding data on 25 antigens to the discrimination of the study groups. Receiver operating characteristic analysis was used to portray the discriminative property of each measured parameter for each antigen in pairwise group comparisons. Complement C3 and C4 deposition increased on autoantibody targets in spite of the decreased serum complement concentrations, and decreased on other autoantigens, demonstrating the imbalance of complement function in patients with lupus erythematosus. Our observations confirmed previously known markers of disease and showed that C3 and C4 deposition data were at least as powerful as Ig binding data in separating the study groups.
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PMID:Immune complex signatures of patients with active and inactive SLE revealed by multiplex protein binding analysis on antigen microarrays. 2298 70

A middle aged female patient presented with generalised palpable purpura associated with intense pruritus along with subconjunctival haemorrhage and orbital inflammation. There was extensive dermographism. Other systemic examinations were within normal limits. Haematological profile was normal except raised D-dimer. Skin biopsy revealed the presence of leucocytoclastic vasculitis. Antinuclear antibody was positive in a titre of 1 : 160, but antidouble-stranded DNA was negative. Urine examination revealed haematuria and proteinuria. Complement C3, C4 and C1q levels were decreased with the presence of anti-C1q antibody. There was a diagnostic dilemma between systemic lupus erythematosus and hypocomplementaemic urticarial vasculitis syndrome. However, as the patient did not fulfil the American College of Rheumatology criteria for systemic lupus erythematosus, but fulfilled all the criteria for hypocomplementaemic urticarial vasculitis syndrome, the case was finally diagnosed as hypocomplementaemic urticarial vasculitis syndrome and treated accordingly with favourable outcome.
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PMID:Hypocomplementaemic urticarial vasculitis syndrome: a mimicker of systemic lupus erythematosus. 2370 33

The aim of this study was to analyze the changes in complements C3 and C4 and C-reactive protein (CRP) in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and to evaluate the role of these indices in the differential diagnosis of SLE and RA. The first 347 patients with SLE, 382 patients with RA and 66 patients with erythema nodosum were selected for the measurement of complement and CRP levels in the serum, the erythema nodosum patients were the control group. The roles of the complements and CRP in the differential diagnosis and disease activity evaluation of SLE and RA were analyzed with SPSS 13.0. Complement C3 and C4 levels were significantly reduced in patients with SLE compared with those in the control group. However, in RA patients, the CRP level was increased. In addition, the levels of complements C3 and C4 in patients with SLE were much lower than those in patients with RA and the level of CRP in RA patients was much higher than that in patients with SLE. The reduction of complement C3 levels in SLE patients, and increase of CRP and complement C4 in patients with RA were associated with a higher risk of joint pain, butterfly rash and oral ulcer. These results show that the disease activity of SLE was negatively correlated with complement C3 and C4, and the disease activity of RA was positively correlated with CRP. With the increase in disease activity, the levels of complements C3 and C4 in patients with SLE were gradually reduced and the level of CRP in patients with RA was increased. There were distinctive differences in the levels of complements C3 and C4 and CRP between SLE and RA patients. The differences are useful in disease activity evaluation and the differential diagnosis of the two diseases that have similar symptoms.
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PMID:Differential diagnosis of systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis with complements C3 and C4 and C-reactive protein. 2422 57

Renal damage is the major cause of SLE associated mortality, and IFIT1expression was elevated in SLE cases in accordance of previous studies. Therefore, we conducted an animal study to identify the role of IFIT1 expression in renal pathological changes.18 female MRL/lpr mice and same number of female BALB/c mice were enrolled in present study. Quantitative analysis of urine protein, Complement C3 and C4, and anti-ds DNA antibody were conducted. HE and PAS staining and TEM analysis were employed to observe the pathological changes in renal tissue. Significant elevation on urine protein and anti-dsDNA and reduction on Complement C3 and C4 were observed in MRL/lpr mice when comparing the controls in same age. Staining and TEM analysis observed several pathological changes in glomerulus among MRL/lpr mice, including cellular enlargement, basement membrane thickening, and increased cellularcasts. The linear regression analysis found the optical density of IFIT1 was inversely associated with F-actin, Nephrin, and Podocin, but not Synatopodin. In summary, IFIT1 expression is associated with podocytes damage, and capable of suppressing some proteins essential to glomerular filtration.
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PMID:The association between expression of IFIT1 in podocytes of MRL/lpr mice and the renal pathological changes it causes: An animal study. 2782 66