SLE and Kidney Damage Explained

We know of more than eighty autoimmune diseases and among the rare conditions include systemic lupus erythematosus or SLE. The immune cells attack the body's own tissues which damages organs. Scientists discovered that when a gene called VANGL-One is mutated, these patients are prone to kidney damage which increases their risk of death.

Though the same gene is essential to a developing embryo's nervous system and kidney, scientists hadn't connected it to kidney disease until recently. A new study found a recurrent genetic deletion in VANGLE-ONE that causes antibodies to build up in the kidney's glomerulus which leads to lupus nephritis or inflammation of the kidney in SLE patients.

What's being deleted in VANGLE-ONE is a region of its gene called intron seven. The more deletions in intron seven, the more likely people will develop kidney disease. Many Tiwi Islanders in the Northern Territory of Australia are missing these proteins and thus have a high rate of kidney disease. Scientists suspect that when intron seven deletions happen, either less of the VANGLE-ONE protein is made or a mutated one is made.

But experiments in mice suggest these two reasons alone are not enough to cause kidney disease; however, when there's also a buildup of autoantibodies, you get kidney inflammation. That explains why it happens in SLE patients and the hope now is new therapies can be made to limit the damage to their kidneys.