Summary-line: 22-Jan n, wilcox@cis.ohio-state. #lupus Return-Path: Date: Tue, 22 Jan 91 14:49:00 pst From: cnorman (Cynthia Norman) To: cnorman, wilcox@cis.ohio-state.edu, luna@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu, anasaz!john@asuvax.eas.asu.edu, dwyer@nosc.mil, jgautier@ads.com, b-davis@cai.utah.edu, richter@triton.unm.edu, hxkpy@slacvm.slac.stanford.edu, botteron@bu-it.bu.edu, rollo@xylogics.com, proud@ihlpy.att.com, bill@picard.att.com, jsparkes@bnr.ca, island!green@uunet.uu.net, ann@snow-white.merit-tech.com, iex!neptune.iex.com!bert@uunet.uu.net, siang@biochem.umass.edu, smalley@pilot.njin.net, king@reasoning.com, mnetor!perle!kevin@cs.toronto.edu, afc@shibaya.lonestar.org, mark.ochsankehl@p2.f175.n120.z1.fidonet.org, abc@brl.mil, pjz@ceres.physics.uiowa.edu, ardyk@tc.fluke.com, cyn@mdaali.cancer.utexas.edu, ogicse!sequent!roseal@ucsd.edu, paulxxxx@portia.stanford.edu, andrea@sdd.hp.com, mvac23!thomas@udel.edu, ames!claris!netcom!shelamer@ucsd.edu, nick@icad.com, marks@ocfmail.ocf.llnl.gov, schillin@scl.cwru.edu, 880039a@acadiau.ca, lbrueck@wpi.wpi.edu Subject: lupus Reply-To: cnorman@ucsd.edu *** EOOH *** Return-Path: Date: Tue, 22 Jan 91 14:49:00 pst From: cnorman (Cynthia Norman) To: cnorman, wilcox@cis.ohio-state.edu, luna@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu, anasaz!john@asuvax.eas.asu.edu, dwyer@nosc.mil, jgautier@ads.com, b-davis@cai.utah.edu, richter@triton.unm.edu, hxkpy@slacvm.slac.stanford.edu, botteron@bu-it.bu.edu, rollo@xylogics.com, proud@ihlpy.att.com, bill@picard.att.com, jsparkes@bnr.ca, island!green@uunet.uu.net, ann@snow-white.merit-tech.com, iex!neptune.iex.com!bert@uunet.uu.net, siang@biochem.umass.edu, smalley@pilot.njin.net, king@reasoning.com, mnetor!perle!kevin@cs.toronto.edu, afc@shibaya.lonestar.org, mark.ochsankehl@p2.f175.n120.z1.fidonet.org, abc@brl.mil, pjz@ceres.physics.uiowa.edu, ardyk@tc.fluke.com, cyn@mdaali.cancer.utexas.edu, ogicse!sequent!roseal@ucsd.edu, paulxxxx@portia.stanford.edu, andrea@sdd.hp.com, mvac23!thomas@udel.edu, ames!claris!netcom!shelamer@ucsd.edu, nick@icad.com, marks@ocfmail.ocf.llnl.gov, schillin@scl.cwru.edu, 880039a@acadiau.ca, lbrueck@wpi.wpi.edu Subject: lupus Reply-To: cnorman@ucsd.edu Return-Path: Date: Tue, 22 Jan 91 17:30:48 -0500 From: Patricia P Wilcox Reply to: siang@BIOCHEM.umass.edu > >i thought lupus WAS an autoimmune reaction to m nunuclear DNA. > ^^^^^^^^^^^ what? >-sian I was merely paraphrasing something I've read in a medical text (_Introduction to Clinical Allergy_ by Ben Feingold, MD); I don't know the definitive medical definition of lupus. Tell us more! Furthermore, I am lately reading medical papers with a distinctly heightened suspicion of the details of their explanations. The point of the quote was that in at least one case, steroids have been reported to exacerbate an autoimmune disease. There are a lot of things going on with people who say they have lupus, but this whole thing of calling this an "autoimmune" disease is suspicious since one of the things that happens in lupus is photosensitivity associated with perfumes, soaps, skin preparations, etc. -- which sounds like the increasingly familiar story of immune system attacking hapten bound to body tissue. There is a "sick building" in North Carolina where they say a lot of people are getting lupus. The symptoms they talk about are pretty much the same thing as chronic fatigue syndrome. I have several friends who have been diagnosed as having multiple sclerosis. Same symptoms. Same symptoms as mine, which I *know* are caused by exposure to organic solvents and other chemicals. My hypothesis is that there is *one* kind of autoimmune disease -- immune system attacking hapten bound to body tissue -- with a dozen different names depending on which tissue is being attacked, and a lot of overlap because the doctor gives it the name of the disease he's most familiar with. It becomes truly an _auto_immune disease when the hapten is pro- duced within your own body, e.g. a component of estrogen or a toxin produced in fighting a virus infection. The autoimmunity escalates to even more dangerous levels if there is in fact a direct immune attack on unmodified body tissue in the absence of a separate hapten bound to that tissue (which I guess happens in the more severe cases of lupus??? Are we *really* seeing an immune reaction to DNA, or is it to DNA bound to steroids naturally occurring in the body?). We desperately need a routine test for immune reactions to hapten/ tissue conjugates (along the lines of tests for hay fever and house dust allergies). My allergist says this is really really difficult. My spies at Chemical Abstracts say that it can be done (find something like horseshoe crab hemoglobin or albumin that the hapten will bind to) but will take some serious work. The allergy book says the allergenic site can be: a) entirely part of the hapten (in which case the horseshoe crab hemoglobin makes sense), b) a binding site on the body protein which becomes available due to a structural change caused by the attached mole- cule, or c) a site that straddles the boundary between body protein and hapten. In cases b) and c), horseshoe crab hemoglobin is probably not useful, but staring at the molecular structures of the things that make me sick reveals a set of them that appear to be in category a). Sorry, I do run on... 8-) Tell us some more about lupus. --Pat Wilcox (wilcox@cis.ohio-state.edu)