Cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated antigen 4 (CTLA-4) is important in regulating T cell-mediated immunity, encompassing the first line of response to viral infections, and genetic variation in CTLA-4 has been associated with SLE.
Disorders of the CTLA-4 gene, especially a GG genotype in exon 1 at +49 and/or 106-bp fragment length of the 3'UTR in exon 4, may be involved in early development of SLE in Japanese children, such as the boys described here.
Multiple investigators have examined patient cohorts gathered from around the world, and although we doubt that all of the reported associations will be replicated, we have probably already discovered many of the genes that are important in lupus pathogenesis, including those encoding human leukocyte antigen-DR, Fcgamma receptor 3A, protein tyrosine phosphatase nonreceptor 22, cytotoxic T lymphocyte associated antigen 4, and mannose-binding lectin.
In the present study, interleukin (IL)-10-treated DCs and CTLA4-Ig were administered to mice with SLE alone or in combination and the therapeutic effects were investigated.
Our results indicate that the non-MHC linked CTLA-4 gene could confer susceptibility in SLE, as it does in various other autoimmune diseases (Hashimoto thyroiditis, Graves' disease, IDDM).
To determine whether 7 candidate genes, including tumor necrosis factor receptor II, bcl-2, CTLA-4, interleukin-10 (IL-10), CD19, Fcy receptor type IIA (CD32), and IL-1 receptor antagonist, may contribute to susceptibility to systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in the Italian population.
These data suggest that high expression of Fas, FasL and IL-6 and low expression of CTLA-4 by the CD8<sup>+</sup>CD28<sup>+</sup> T-cell subset promotes the activation-induced cell death of the CD8<sup>+</sup>CD28<sup>+</sup> T-cell subset, resulting in an imbalance of CD8<sup>+</sup>CD28<sup>-</sup>/CD8<sup>+</sup>CD28<sup>+</sup> T cells in active SLE patients, which represents an important feature in the immunological pathogenesis of SLE.
We searched all the publications about the association between CTLA-4) promoter exon-1 +49 and 1722T/C polymorphism and SLE from PubMed, Elsevier Science Direct, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM), Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and Wanfang (Chinese).