Commensal Microbes May Initiate and Drive Immune Responses in Lupus | Taconic Biosciences

At the end of March, researchers at Yale University published a paper entitled "Commensal orthologs of the human autoantigen Ro60 as triggers of autoimmunity in lupus"
in the journal Science Translational Medicine in which the authors
demonstrated that Ro60 orthologs exist in commensal bacteria commonly
found in or on the human body.


Greiling et al. demonstrated in human and mouse studies that
these bacterial orthologs of Ro may generate autoimmune responses that
drive lupus. The authors revealed that a high level of homology exists
between the major T and B cell epitopes within human Ro60 (hRo60) and
commensal Ro60 orthologs. Antibodies from anti-Ro60 positive lupus
patients, but not negative control patients preferentially
coimmunoprecipitated Ro60 ribonucleoproteins (RNPs) from a Ro60
ortholog-containing commensal organism. Further demonstrating the
cross-reactivity of orthologous Ro60, hRo60-reactive T cell clones, and
freshly isolated anti-Ro60-positive memory T cells responded to epitopes
derived from commensal Ro60 in vitro.

Vitamin D supplements may benefit lupus patients

A new clinical study published in BioMedCentral's open access journal Arthritis Research and Therapy provides preliminary evidence that vitamin D supplementation could be considered an immunomodulatory agent for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), a debilitating autoimmune disease characterized not only by skin, joint, neurological and renal symptoms, but also by inflammation of tissue linings in the body.

Chronic exposure to staph bacteria may be risk factor for lupus, study finds

Chronic exposure to even small amounts of staph bacteria could be a risk factor for the chronic inflammatory disease lupus, Mayo Clinic research shows. Staph, short for Staphylococcus aureus, is a germ commonly found on the skin or in the nose, sometimes causing infections. In the Mayo study, mice were exposed to low doses of a protein found in staph and developed a lupus-like disease, with kidney disease and autoantibodies like those found in the blood of lupus patients.