Decreased Serum Levels of Transforming Growth Factor-beta1 are Associated with Renal Damage in Patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Abstract

S ystemic lupus erythematosus is an autoimmune disease that can cause damage to multiple organ systems, of which; renal involvement is a common and serious complication that is often associated with a poor long-term prognosis. Dysfunction of B and T lymphocytes is thought to be important in the pathogenesis of SLE. Lupus nephritis is an important complication in SLE and causes widespread morbidity and mortality, so its pathogenesis is important to be studied. Our marker; TGF-B1 has a significant role in the pathogenesis of lupus nephritis & it can assess renal activity earlier than other markers. This giving us a hope to investigate the diagnostic value of serum TGF-B1 levels in a cohort of SLE patients with and without lupus nephritis to correlate levels of this bio-marker with other disease variables, disease activity indices and standard laboratory investigations used to assess renal function. Our study included 60 patients with SLE, all fulfilled the ACR 1997 revised criteria for the classification of SLE and 30 age/ sex- matched healthy control subjects.