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THURSDAY, Oct. 17 (HealthScoutNews) -- A new compound,
tested on lab animals with a disease similar to human lupus, helps
reduce the kidney inflammation that's common among people with the
ailment.
Researchers hope it will prove to be a promising new
treatment for the baffling disease, in which the body turns on itself.
A chemical cousin of anti-anxiety medications such
as Valium and Xanax, the new compound reduced the inflamed kidneys
of mice bred to develop a condition similar to human systemic lupus
erythematosus or SLE, researchers from the University of Michigan
and the University of California at Berkeley report in the latest
issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
"It wouldn't be a cure [for lupus]," says Gary D.
Glick, a professor of biological chemistry at the University of
Michigan Medical School and one of the study's lead authors. "But
we believe it could arrest the progression of kidney disease. Maybe
25 to 50 percent of lupus patients have kidney disease."
Before that becomes reality, he stresses, the compound
must be tried in humans and gain government approval, a process
that typically takes several years.
Up to 1.5 million Americans have been diagnosed with
lupus, according to the Lupus Foundation of America. The chronic
inflammatory disease can affect various parts of the body, including
the joints, blood, kidneys, lungs and skin. It can be fatal. A lupus
patient's immune system loses the ability to detect the difference
between foreign substances it should be attacking and its own healthy
cells and tissues.
Currently, doctors treat lupus-related kidney inflammation
with immune-suppressing drugs to stabilize the overactive immune
system, as well as cytotoxic agents. However, those agents kill
off healthy cells as well as the cells they are aiming to kill,
resulting in serious side effects.
The compound tested by the Michigan and California
scientists, a benzodiazepine they term Bz-423, kills off only the
"bad players," as Glick puts it. "It kills the lupus cells and spares
the healthy immune cells," he says.
When they gave the compound to mice with lupus, 16
percent of them got lupus-related kidney disease. In the meantime,
60 percent of the untreated group of mice had kidney problems.
"What was really interesting was the effect of our
drug was concentrated on a certain group of cells, the ones critical
in mediating kidney disease," Glick says. "And it left the other
immune cells alone."
Eventually, the new drug might negate the need for
prednisone, a lupus drug that works by stabilizing the overactive
immune system. It also may let patients take lower doses of prednisone,
thus reducing its side effects, Glick says.
Another expert praises the study. "I think it's an
important advance with a new compound that has the potential to
alter the immune system so that it is less likely to be autoimmune,"
says Dr. Bevra Hahn, a professor of medicine and chief of rheumatology
at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California
at Los Angeles.
"The fact that it's a benzodiazepine is a little
confusing [to people] because a lot of people have experience taking
benzodiazepines -- such as Valium, for instance. Although this [new
compound] is chemically related, it does not have the same effects,"
Hahn explains. "This is a new idea on how to change the behavior
of the immune system so it's less likely to turn against the body.
It opens up a new approach."
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