Article Text
Abstract
Objectives Quantitating gene expression is a potential method of developing biomarkers in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Because of the known pathological role of B cell activating factor (BAFF) in SLE, we explored the association between BAFF gene expression and clinical activity in SLE.
Methods A total of 275 patients with SLE completed this phase of a prospective observational study. At entry into the study, the BAFF gene expression levels were determined in peripheral blood RNA. Serum concentration of BAFF protein was also measured. We then determined clinical associations with SLE disease history, SLE activity on the same day and SLE activity over the course of the next year.
Results Elevated BAFF gene expression was associated with a history of more leucopenia and serologically with more autoantibodies (anti-dsDNA, anti-Sm, anti-Ro, anti-La and anti-RNP) and low complement. Patients with higher amounts of BAFF transcript had higher measured levels of clinical disease activity. Initial high levels of BAFF gene expression also predicted increased disease activity over the course of the next year. In contrast, serum concentration of BAFF protein was not strongly associated with same-day global disease activity or with future disease activity.
Conclusions BAFF gene expression level is associated with clinical and serological SLE activity on the same day and predictive of clinical activity over the next year. BAFF gene expression is a better measure and predictor of SLE disease activity than the serum BAFF protein level.
- Systemic Lupus Erythematosus
- Disease Activity
- Cytokines
This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Supplementary materials
Supplementary Data
This web only file has been produced by the BMJ Publishing Group from an electronic file supplied by the author(s) and has not been edited for content.
Files in this Data Supplement:
- Data supplement 1 - Online supplement