All Lupus Cases May Be Linked To a Common Virus, Study Finds (nbcnews.com) 49
One of the most common viruses in the world could be the cause of lupus, an autoimmune disease with wide-ranging symptoms, according to a new study. From a report: Until now, lupus was somewhat mysterious: No single root cause of the disease had been found, and while there is no cure, there are medications that can treat it.
The research, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, suggests that Epstein-Barr virus -- which 95% of people acquire at some point in life -- could cause lupus by driving the body to attack its own healthy cells.
It adds to mounting evidence that Epstein-Barr is associated with multiple long-term health issues, including other autoimmune conditions. As this evidence stacks up, scientists have accelerated calls for a vaccine that targets the virus.
"If we now better understand how this fastidious virus is responsible for autoimmune diseases, I think it's time to figure out how to prevent it," said Dr. Anca Askanase, clinical director of the Lupus Center at Columbia University, who wasn't involved in the new research.
The research, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, suggests that Epstein-Barr virus -- which 95% of people acquire at some point in life -- could cause lupus by driving the body to attack its own healthy cells.
It adds to mounting evidence that Epstein-Barr is associated with multiple long-term health issues, including other autoimmune conditions. As this evidence stacks up, scientists have accelerated calls for a vaccine that targets the virus.
"If we now better understand how this fastidious virus is responsible for autoimmune diseases, I think it's time to figure out how to prevent it," said Dr. Anca Askanase, clinical director of the Lupus Center at Columbia University, who wasn't involved in the new research.
It's not Lupus (Score:5, Funny)
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Except for that one time it was Lupus!
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Also unsure how "fastidious" can be used as a description of a virus.
Re:It's not Lupus (Score:5, Informative)
Also unsure how "fastidious" can be used as a description of a virus.
TIL that the archaic definition of "fastidious," based on the original latin root, is "disgusting" or "disagreeable." Which, to be fair, is a label I would apply to a virus that causes something as horrible as Lupus.
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The funny thing is that as soon as I saw "[condition] may be linked to a common virus" I thought, "It's Epstein-Barr, isn't it?"
Seems it causes bloody everything under the sun :P
As soon as there's even a clinical trial I can sign up for to get vaccinated against it, I'm getting it. I had mono in my late teens, so I can be expected to have dormant Epstein-Barr in me. A horrible autoimmune condition that my mother has (which leads to among other things her skin regularly feeling like it's on fire) seems to b
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A meaning that hasn't been used for 400 years is just one that is used incorrectly. "Pernicious" is available if the esteemed doctor wants an apt big word to impress illiterate plebs.
Every knows (Score:3)
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It is always DNS.
Indeed, everything seems infected with Google DNS IPs nowadays.
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Joking aside, the diagnostic criteria is basically "has some of the known symptoms, ruled out everything else". That's why House didn't like it, he thought there was always a root cause, and it looks like science may have discovered it.
The question now is, how do you undo it? Some of the damage may be permanent, but just getting the auto immune system to stop attacking the rest of the body would make a huge difference to a lot of people, and not just people with Lupus.
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That's not the goal of a vaccine against a dormant virus (destroying B-cells), it's about developing a more capable immune reaction against the virus itself. See for example the shingles vaccine (targets dormant VZV, aka shingles / chickenpox). With a strong immune recognition of the virus, as soon as it tries to reactivate, it's immediately targeted, preventing it from becoming problematic.
Dormant viruses use a combination of (A) techniques to suppress immune recognition of them, and (B) low / no reproduc
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I think parent was asking how to undo the damage already done by the autoimmune attack. It may not be fixable, depending on what's been damaged, how badly, etc.
CAR-T is interesting. Not a biologist, but I'm hoping that and similar technologies can be used to program immune cells to destroy viruses like E-B.
There exist antiviral drugs too. Dr. House liked acyclovir. (Do people know Hugh Laurie's father is (was?) a real doctor?)
I too had a pretty bad case of mono around age 20. A good friend, very strong and
Re:It's not Lupus (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's the thing: that's actually how Lupus is diagnosed, at least in my limited single-data-point experience - my father.
He had a random fluid build-up in his pericardial sac around his heart that was basically squeezing his heart to the point it couldn't function any more. After two weeks in the hospital of diagnostics and so on where the eliminated all kinds of other causes, they defaulted to Lupus and started putting him on steroids, and he's been healthy ever since with absolutely no recurrence.
It will be interesting to see if the causal link between Lupus and Epstein-Barr holds up to further scrutiny - it would be great if we could eliminate the occurrence of autoimmune disease through future vaccination.
Of course we'll need the political loonies to GTFO of the Department of Health and Human Services in order to allow approval of any new vaccines...
Re:It's not Lupus (Score:5, Interesting)
That was probably the right thing to do. It's called differential diagnosis [wikipedia.org], and it doesn't mean that the doctors didn't suspect Lupus from the start. They were being careful to rule out alternatives in order of priority.
If your Word document that you're writing has a grammatical error, it could be caused by many things, from a typo to bad autocompletion to hackers messing with your desktop or bad choice of language dictionary packs etc. You don't start the first treatment by rebooting the computer and replacing the whole MS Office suite. You first try a bunch of less invasive things.
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Oh, I absolutely understand what was going on and why. I have no issues with the care he received, and he has nothing but good things to say about the care he received.
It's just kind of weird that in the flow chart of medical diagnosis, all the arrows end up pointing at Lupus.
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There's some fascinating new work [theguardian.com] on "inverse-vaccines". In the same way that antigens can be flagged as "foreign", they can also be flagged as "non-foreign" by attaching N-acetylgalactosamine (pGal) to them. The liver recognizes that tag and uses it to suppress immune activation against that antigen.
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Thanks. I try not to get my hopes up, but it does seem like I'm the last year or two we have moved closer on a number of treatments.
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... they can also be flagged as "non-foreign" by attaching N-acetylgalactosamine (pGal)
Shhh!!! Don't let any cancers hear you.
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Late for Halloween, but way scarier! (Score:1)
https://www.anthro1.net/p/are-... [anthro1.net]
Posting Anon cause of anti-science hate.
Files (Score:3, Funny)
"no such thing" (Score:1)
Also MS (Score:1)
that link was established, maybe not the only cause.
they got it wrong (Score:3, Funny)
The death isn't Barr killing Epstein, it's Trump vaguely telling Barr to kill Epstein. It is probably not appropriate to name a mind virus that mobsters used for generations after a recent example.
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And now you loop us back full circle.
I don't see how (Score:4)
Infectocausation (Score:1)
I made up the word in lieu of infectious etiology to describe that probably many many more diseases are infection triggered than currently know, prime candidate: HSV.
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The best word is probably just "autoimmune." In an arms race between molecular mimicry by pathogens and the immune system, it's inevitable that the immune system sometimes gets trained to defeat something that looks like a good cell and creates antibodies that target both the disease and the healthy cell.
It's likely that all autoimmune diseases are related to pathogen exposure/infection.
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autoimmune reactions can then follow setting off a process, very much so
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Epstein-Barr May Be Highly Underestimated (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it a good vaccine target? (Score:2)
Viruses that mutate frequently (influenza) are usually poor targets for vaccine development. At best, you're rotating in new vaccines to deal with strains that emerged months ago. Does Epstein-Barr mutate often? Are we seeing new strains all the time?
Well, duh (Score:1)
while there is no cure, there are medications that can treat it.
Of course there's a cure, but it's in the best interests of big pharma to keep recurring customers on the teat for life.
Autoimmune impacts 5% of the population (Score:2)
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Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better. Stronger. Faster.
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Lupus and Scleroderma in the same family (Score:2)
My friend has Scleroderma and his mother died of lupus.
Both are auto-immune conditions . From what I read online, both conditions are somewhat related: "around 20% of people with scleroderma also have lupus as a cross-over condition or 'overlap syndrome'".
I wonder if both my friend and his mother had the same virus trigger their conditions
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This is some info regarding scleroderma that I have shared with my friend with scleroderma over the years. I suspect some relationship to Lupus. Maybe this can help someone.
_--------_
Take a look at this article on autoimmune diseases.
https://www.lifeextension.com/... [lifeextension.com]
It suggests vitamin D and Omega-3s:
_The daily supplemental dose was 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 and 1,000 mg of omega-3 fatty acids._
https://journals.plos.org/plos... [plos.org]
Here the core paper behind this article. They induced and cured an MS- like conditio
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This news says all lupus cases may be caused by the EBV virus. Link:
https://www.nbcnews.com/health... [nbcnews.com]
The Epstein-Barr virus was found to reprogram immune B cells to wrongly attack the nucleii of other cells with 'anti-nuclear antibodies'
Past research has also liked scleroderma and EBV. So I feel lupus and scleroderma may both have be triggered by EBV.
EBV hides in immune B cells. This has also been linked to scleroderma. So the question is how to flush out these bad cells, called *auto-reactive B ce