B lymphocyte activation by insoluble anti-mu antibodies in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus
Becker, H.; Schauer, U.; Helmke, K.
Clinical and Experimental Immunology 66(2): 365-372
1986
ISSN/ISBN: 0009-9104 PMID: 3102135 Document Number: 282610
In order to study the capacity of anti-immunoglobulin (Ig) antibodies to induce proliferative responses in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBC) from patients with systemic lupus erythrematosus (SLE), anti-.mu. coupled to Sepharose beads (anti-.mu.) was used as a polyclonal activator. In 18 patients, a strong proliferative response was associated with inactive disease, and the response was lower in clinical active disease (P < 0.02). An inverse correlation could also be observed in six patients who were studied longitudinally (P < 0.01). These results indicate that anti-.mu. responsiveness is closely related to disease activity in SLE. In addition, sequential data obtained from two patients during an early stage of clinical deterioration suggest that a low anti-.mu. response might be an early indicator of a clinical relapse. In the patients investigated, the anti-.mu. response was not correlated with the response to pokeweed mitogen (PWM), or with the quantity of B cells. When T cell depleted cell fractions were studied, marked increases in the proliferative responses to anti-.mu. were observed in some patients. These studies suggest that the response to anti-.mu. might be modified by T cells to a variable extent in patients with SLE.