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OKLAHOMA CITY — Researchers have discovered a protein that may predict lupus by using blood samples from the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation’s Lupus Family Registry and Repository.
The lupus study is a partnership between OMRF and the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York and appears in the September issue of Genes and Immunity.
“The finding itself was that family members have some of the abnormalities that lupus patients have, but they’re not sick,” said OMRF’s Dr. John Harley of Edmond, who co-authored the study. “So it’s thought that something from their environment or their genetics is making this happen to them.”
Lupus is a chronic disease in which the body attacks its own tissue, according to the Lupus Foundation of America. Symptoms vary widely but common effects include pain from swollen joints, anemia, pain while breathing and persistent fever and fatigue.
The discovery creates a foundation for developing new and less toxic therapies by understanding how lupus originated, Harley said.
More than 7,000 biological samples are part of OMRF’s Lupus Family Registry and Repository. More than 50 investigators from the United States and internationally use the collection to study the genetics of environmental exposures that predispose people to getting lupus.
“There’s been a lot of work done trying to find these environmental factors,” Harley said. “In my opinion, the only one that looks powerful is exposure to the Epstein-Barr virus.”
Harley hopes to use interferon-alpha protein levels to determine who likely may develop lupus.
“From these findings, we think that blocking interferon alpha activity might be a novel therapeutic approach in this sometimes-fatal illness,” said Dr. Amr Sawalha, assistant professor of rheumatology at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and OMRF researcher.
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