Cytokine profiles of lupus patients with or without nephritis

Excerpt

It remains unclear why some patients with SLE develop lupus nephritis (LN) and others do not. A reasonable hypothesis is that the inflammatory/immunomodulatory mechanisms in patients with LN are either qualitatively different than in nonrenal (NR) lupus, or that similar pathways are activated but the magnitude of activation is greater in LN. Studies of individual or small groups of candidate cytokines support this idea. To test this hypothesis we examined baseline serum and peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) cytokine profiles of SLE patients with active LN or NR (mainly arthritis) lupus before entry into a clinical trial of Laquinimod (Teva Pharmaceuticals) as an adjunct anti-inflammatory agent for SLE. We sought to determine whether NR or LN was associated with a distinct pattern or level of cytokine expression. …