Scientists, including one of Indian-origin, have found that a plant-derived compound may help suppress the progression of lupus - a degenerative disease in which the immune system turns against itself.
Researchers at the University of Houston (UH) said the findings raise hope for a new class of drugs to treat lupus that may not include the long list of adverse risks and side effects often associated with current treatments for this disease.
Lupus, or systemic lupus erythematosus, has symptoms ranging from debilitating pain and fatigue to organ failure and a host of other impairments.
An estimated 1.5 million Americans, and at least five million people worldwide, have a form of lupus.
With only one drug specifically approved for the treatment of lupus in the past 50 years, lupus patients are commonly treated with steroids, a class of immunosuppressive drugs that delay the development and progression of the disease by suppressing the immune system.
By suppressing the immune system in its entirety, however, this mode of treatment carries with it an increased risk of infections and other harmful side effects.
Chandra Mohan, Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Endowed Professor of biomedical engineering in the UH Cullen College of Engineering, and his group said that the use of a synthetic, plant-derived compound - abbreviated CDDO - was shown to effectively suppress the multiple steps of lupus development in murine models, including the onset of kidney disease.
One of the most common organs to be attacked by lupus is the kidney, manifesting in lupus nephritis.
Lupus nephritis, which causes inflammation of the kidneys and impairs their ability to effectively rid the body of waste products and other toxins, is the leading cause of lupus-related deaths and results in tens of thousands of hospitalisations per year.
"The development of lupus is a two-step reaction. First, the immune system develops antibodies that attack the body's own DNA, then that activated immune system attacks the kidneys. We found that CDDO may block both of these steps," Mohan said.
"The most exciting part of this research is that CDDO is originally plant-derived, so it's relatively natural and carries less chance of side effects.
"That's a very important point, because many of the current therapeutic agents being used for lupus have significant side effects. As far as we have tested in these experiments, we found that the CDDO compound had no known side effects.
"Additionally, compared to many other test compounds we've previously tried for treating lupus, this one appears to be much more effective," Mohan said.
