New Drug May Ease Lupus Complication

[Guest guest]

Health - HealthScoutNews

New Drug May Ease Lupus Complication

Thu Oct 17,12:06 PM ET

By Kathleen Doheny

HealthScoutNews Reporter

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 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 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. "

What To Do

For more information on lupus, see the Lupus Foundation of America and the

National Institutes of Health.