People with lupus produce a number of different kinds of antibodies that attack their own tissues and cells. More than half of people with lupus develop glomerulonephritis, a form of kidney disease in which complexes of these autoantibodies deposit in the kidneys and cause damage there.
With colleague Steven Emancipator, MD, Dr. Greenspan set out to determine if IgG autoantibodies of a particular subclass, known as IgG3, are required for, or at least involved in, the development of glomerulonephritis in the MRL/lpr-mouse model of lupus.
He found that kidney disease was in fact decreased in IgG3-deficient mice—a finding that may inform future studies focused on the characteristics of antibodies that predispose to kidney damage in people with lupus.
Rev. July 2010