Operations on the gall bladder

Students and the developing world

“…Twin studies have shown up to 67% concordance for the disease in monozygotic twins-indeed, one pair of twins had been separated by adoption from an orphanage when they were aged 6 months, brought up in widely differing backgrounds, and each developed systemic lupus erythematosus within one month of each other at the age of 14. In addition, an increased frequency of autoantibodies and diminished function of the suppressor cells have been found in otherwise healthy relatives of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus.…”

Genetics of systemic lupus erythematosus.

“…Silent or null alleles of C2, C4A, or C4B may also occur. Particular alleles (including null alleles) are found in significant association with certain HLA haplotypes13; for example, HLA-B8 is strongly associated with a null allele of C4A.13 14 Thus conceivably the abnormal frequencies of HLA antigens reported in systemic lupus erythematosus may be due to the association of these antigens with null or functionally inefficient variants of C2, C4A, or C4B.…”