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Before seeking out Dr. Richard Burt of Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Kathy Hammons could barely care for her children as a result of the effects of lupus, an autoimmune disease in which the body attacks itself. She had been on oxygen for two years, was constantly fatigued, and was overweight from the steroids used to control her disease. "I would say before this option, they [lupus patients] hit a brick wall," Burt said. "They had nothing more, no further treatments." Burt's pioneering research, however, offered a new option. His breakthrough procedure uses a patient's stem cells to treat extremely severe cases...

EVANSTON, Ill. -- A recent Northwestern University study found that a new treatment using stem cells might extend the lives of patients with lupus. Stem cell treatments could help patients with severe cases who have not responded to other options, according to a study published in the Feb. 1 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association. Lupus is a disease that causes patients' immune systems to become unable to distinguish between foreign substances and normal parts of the body. This causes the immune system to attack the patient's own cells and tissues instead of protecting them. Researchers, including...

Lupus is a chronic inflammatory disease that can affect various parts of the body, especially the skin, joints, blood, and kidneys. The body's immune system normally makes proteins called antibodies to protect the body against viruses, bacteria and other foreign materials. In lupus, these antibodies mistake normal cells in the body’s tissues for foreign bodies and attack them. For most people, lupus is a mild disease affecting only a few organs. For others, it may cause serious and even life-threatening problems. The exact cause of lupus is unknown. More than 16,000 Americans develop lupus each year. According to the Lupus...

Associated Press CHICAGO — For all of her 20s, when Edjuana Ross should have been relishing the thrill of early adulthood, she was instead in and out of hospitals, battling a disease that attacked her skin, brain and heart. Now, at 33, she has her life back, thanks to a stem-cell transplant from her own bone marrow, a drastic, experimental treatment that could be promising for patients with severe lupus. Ross' illness is in remission for the first time since her diagnosis shortly after high-school graduation. "I'm just trying to get used to being well, and it's a very weird...

Source: Yale University Date: 2006-01-11 URL: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/01/060110231737.htm Yale Study Explains Complex Infection Fighting Mechanism Yale School of Medicine researchers report in Nature Immunology how infection fighting mechanisms in the body can distinguish between a virus and the healthy body, shedding new light on auto immune disorders. The infection fighters in question, toll-like receptors (TLRs), function by recognizing viral, bacterial or fungal pathogens and then sending signals throughout the immune system announcing that an infection has occurred. Viruses change features to avoid being recognized, thereby triggering the immune response. But TLRs recognize the highly conserved features of pathogens, features that...