The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between the expression of
B cell activating factor (BAFF) and BAFF receptor in patients with disease activity
of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Real-time RT-PCR was used to examine BAFF mRNA
expression in peripheral blood monocytes of active and stable SLE patients and
healthy controls. The percentage of BAFF receptor 3 (BR3) on B lymphocytes was
measured by flow cytometry. Soluble BAFF levels in serum were assayed by ELISA.
Microalbumin levels were assayed by an automatic immune analysis machine. BAFF mRNA
and soluble BAFF levels were highest in the active SLE group, followed by the stable
SLE group, and controls (P<0.01). The percentage of BR3 on B lymphocytes was
downregulated in the active SLE group compared with the stable SLE group and controls
(P<0.01). BAFF mRNA levels and soluble BAFF levels were higher in patients who
were positive for proteinuria than in those who were negative (P<0.01). The
percentage of BR3 on B lymphocytes was lower in patients who were positive for
proteinuria than in those who were negative (P<0.01). The BAFF/BR3 axis may be
over-activated in SLE patients. BAFF and BR3 levels may be useful parameters for
evaluating treatment.
Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic systemic autoimmune disease leading to inflammatory tissue damage in multiple organs. The crude polysaccharides (BPs) isolated from the roots of Bupleurum smithii var. parvifolium have anticomplementary activity and immunomodulatory functions on macrophages. To study its potential benefit on SLE, we examined effects of BPs on MRL-lpr mice, which have similar disease features to human SLE. MRL-lpr mice were treated orally with BPs 15, 30, or 60 mg kg−1 day−1 for 12 weeks and their SLE characteristics were evaluated. The results revealed that BPs elongated life span, improved kidney function, delayed lymphadenopathy, and reduced autoantibodies. It seemed to be mediated by inhibition of complement and macrophages activation and suppression of interferon-γ (IFN-γ) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) gene expression in the kidney. These results implicate that BPs may be an immunomodulator for the treatment of autoimmune diseases like SLE.
<p style='text-indent:20px;'>This paper is dedicated to solving high-dimensional coupled FBSDEs with non-Lipschitz diffusion coefficients numerically. Under mild conditions, we provided a posterior estimate of the numerical solution that holds for any time duration. This posterior estimate validates the convergence of the recently proposed Deep BSDE method. In addition, we developed a numerical scheme based on the Deep BSDE method and presented numerical examples in financial markets to demonstrate the high performance.</p>
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