Calif. Lupus is an autoimmune disease that impairs quality of life and is often life-threatening. Survival rates have improved over the past 20 years with medications that suppress the immune system indiscriminately, which carries the possibility of fatal infections.
More recent research is aimed at suppressing only the undesirable immune responses.
Scientists at the University of California Los Angeles identified a specific sequence of amino acids that forms the peptide that sets off a chain of events resulting in kidney damage. Control groups were administered either with peptides that were not T-cell determinants or with saline. The researchers believe that administering the T-cell determinants induces tolerance so that the body does not react to this harmful peptide in the future. Normally, mice with this form of lupus die of kidney failure within one year. Those in the control groups lived an average of 35 weeks.