Black Africans often have distinct variants of systemic lupus erythematosus compared to white patients, but conventional diagnostic tests can’t detect these variants, say researchers from Scotland’s University of Edinburgh and collaborators from Zimbabwe. Their findings point up the urgency of including specific tests to identify these disease variants, improving…
A recent 12-year follow-up study performed on first-degree relatives (FDRs) of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) showed an increased frequency of autoantibodies such as anti-nuclear antibodies (ANA) when compared to healthy controls. The study, “Autoantibodies persist in relatives to systemic lupus erythematosus patients during 12 years follow-up,” was published…
The promise that the field of biomarkers hold for earlier diagnosis and hence superior treatment of systemic autoimmune diseases were the focus of a recent review in Drug Discovery & Development. Systemic autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid (RA), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), Sjögren’s syndrome (SjS), polymyositis/dermatomyositis, and systemic sclerosis (SSc) are disorders…