Results of preclinical studies by investigators at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) reported in the August 2016 issue of Arthritis & Rheumatology demonstrate, for the first time, that including novel biomarkers in lupus nephritis (LN) prognostic models significantly increases their power to predict therapeutic efficacy. The article is titled “Development of Biomarker Models to Predict Outcomes in Lupus Nephritis.” Identifying biomarker models with sufficient predictive power is a critical step toward developing clinical decision-making tools that can rapidly identify patients who require a change in therapy and potentially reduce onset of renal fibrosis during induction therapy. Approximately half of all patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) develop LN, an immune complex-mediated glomerulonephritis. LN, in turn, leads to renal failure in up to 50% of patients within five years. American College of Rheumatology guidelines recommend changing LN treatment after six months of induction therapy if response to therapy is not achieved. However, “response to therapy” is not clearly defined and renal damage can occur during the six-month induction period. Currently, clinicians monitor response to treatment via blood pressure measurements, serum complement levels, anti-double-stranded DNA (anti-dsDNA) antibody levels, urinary sediment, urinary protein-to-creatinine ratios, and surrogates of renal function. Unfortunately, predicting disease progression is difficult using these traditional biomarkers due to their low sensitivity and high LN heterogeneity at presentation. Even when machine-learning models are employed, traditional biomarkers are only 69% accurate in predicting a LN diagnosis among SLE patients.Login Or Register To Read Full Story