Furthermore, a higher CD3Z methylation level was significantly correlated with a higher SLE disease activity index and more severe clinical manifestations, such as proteinuria, haemolytic anaemia and thrombocytopenia, whereas VHL hypermethylation was not.
Aberrant CD247 transcript variants displaying either spliced exon 7 or short 3'-untranslated region have been detected in SLE T cells, and a recent genome-wide association study reported the existence of new CD247 single-nucleotide polymorphisms in SLE patients.