Patients in remission have a lower percentage of autoreactive B cells (black) than do symptomatic SLE patients, but still considerably higher than healthy individuals.
Patients with SLE suffer from chronic inflammation mainly of the connective tissues and organs. Treatment with immunosuppressants or cytotoxic drugs relieves the symptoms of SLE by depleting B cells, but these patients in remission are prone to frequent flare-ups.
During normal B cell development, checkpoints identify and destroy cells that make antibodies against the self. Previous studies revealed high levels of self-reactive antibodies in patients with SLE compared with healthy people, but whether these cells persist in symptom-free remission patients was unknown.
Yurasov et al. used ELISA to look at the reactivity of individual B...
