Wellcome Trust researchers have identified a key gene involved in the disease Lupus, which affects around 50,000 people in the UK, mostly women. The lead researcher behind the study has called for more patients to volunteer DNA samples to enable them to further study the underlying causes of the disease.

Lupus is an autoimmune disease which produces antibodies causing injuries to the body’s cells and tissue. It makes the immune system go out of control and the organism attack healthy cells instead of the germs on them. This pathology, which affects more than 5 million people around the world, is more developed in women of fertile age between 15 and 44 years old.

A gene discovered by scientists at Wake Forest University School of Medicine has been linked to lupus and related autoimmune diseases. The finding, reported in the current issue of Nature Genetics, is the latest in a series of revelations that shed new light on what goes wrong in human cells to cause the diseases.

The prognosis for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), an autoimmune disease that mainly affects women in their reproductive years, has improved recently, prompting a shift toward improving quality of life. For men with SLE, concerns have been raised about their future fertility.

36% of patients with refractory systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE or lupus) remain well after undergoing B-cell depletion therapy (BCDT) without needing further standard immunosuppressive agents, according to a study presented today at EULAR 2007, the Annual European Congress of Rheumatology in Barcelona, Spain.

Treatment with belimumab resulted in a sustained improvement of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE or lupus) disease activity in 46% of patients at week 52, according to a novel combined responder index in results presented today at EULAR 2007, the Annual European Congress of Rheumatology in Barcelona, Spain.