A National Health Research Institutes (NHRI) team has discovered a biomarker that could help in diagnosing the most common type of lupus earlier on, the institute said yesterday.
The group, comprised of researchers and physicians from the NHRI, Taichung Veterans General Hospital and Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital, identified several germline and somatic variants of the protein coding gene MAP4K3, also known as GLK, which can cause an overexpression of the gene in T cells, and is associated with a higher risk of developing systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).
NHRI assistant research fellow Chuang Huai-chia (莊懷佳) said that SLE is a chronic, complex and systemic autoimmune disease that can damage multiple organs, with about 90 percent of cases occurring in women, but as each patient can have different symptoms, the disease is often difficult to diagnose early.
Photo: Lin Hui-chin, Taipei Times
A team, led by NHRI Immunology Research Center Distinguished Investigator Tan Tse-hua (譚澤華), began studying the cause and the precise biomarkers of SLE in 2009.
In 2011, they discovered that GLK, which can regulate immune inflammation responses, plays a key role in developing SLE.
They later found that GLK overexpression induces interleukin-17A production and autoimmune responses, but the mechanism of GLK overexpression in people with SLE remained unclear.
They teamed up with Taichung Veterans General Hospital and Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital to collect 431 genomic DNA samples from people who did not have SLE, and people with SLE and their family members, for next-generation sequencing.
Chuang said they found that more than 40 percent of the people with SLE have GLK germline and somatic variants, and some of the GLK overexpression induced by the variants, through the stabilization of GLK mRNAs or proteins, might be involved in the development of SLE.
The team is also the first to find that the novel E3 ligase makorin ring-finger protein 4 (MKRN4), a putative ubiquitin-protein E3 ligase, which was thought to be a pseudogene, can induce GLK protein degradation, and that downregulation and mutation of MKRN4 might also lead to GLK overexpression and subsequent induction of autoimmune responses, she said.
Tan said the findings suggest that if female family members of people with the specific GLK germline and somatic variants receive regular genetic testing, they are more likely to be diagnosed with SLE early and receive treatment.
He said the team has developed a screening kit, for which they are applying for a patent, and it is expected to be used clinically within two years.
Their research was published in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases last month.
TRICKED INTO MOVING: Local governments in China do not offer any help, and Taiwanese there must compete with Chinese in an unfamiliar setting, a researcher said Beijing’s incentives for Taiwanese businesspeople to invest in China are only intended to lure them across the Taiwan Strait, after which they receive no real support, an expert said on Sunday. Over the past few years, Beijing has been offering a number of incentives that “benefit Taiwanese in name, while benefiting China in reality,” a cross-strait affairs expert said on condition of anonymity. Strategies such as the “31 incentives” are intended to lure Taiwanese talent, capital and technology to help address China’s economic issues while also furthering its “united front” efforts, they said. Local governments in China do not offer much practical
Police have detained a Taoyuan couple suspected of over the past two months colluding with human trafficking rings and employment scammers in Southeast Asia to send nearly 100 Taiwanese jobseekers to Cambodia. At a media briefing in Taipei yesterday, the Criminal Investigation Bureau presented items seized from the couple, including alleged victims’ passports, forged COVID-19 vaccination records, mobile phones, bank documents, checks and cash. The man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and his girlfriend, surnamed Tsan (詹), were taken into custody last month, after police at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport stopped four jobseekers from boarding a flight to Phnom Penh, said Dustin Lee (李泱輯),
PUBLIC POLL: More than half believe Chinese drills would make Taiwanese less willing to unify with China, while 36 percent said an invasion was highly unlikely Half of Taiwanese support independence, according to the results of a poll released yesterday by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation, which also found that President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) support rating fell by 7 percentage points. Fifty percent of respondents supported independence, 25.7 percent supported maintaining the “status quo” and 11.8 percent supported unification, while 12.1 percent had no opinion, did not know or refused to answer, the foundation said. Support for independence is the new mainstream opinion, regardless of which party is in power, foundation chairman Michael You (游盈隆) said. Insinuations that Taiwan wants to maintain the “status quo” are a fabrication that
BILINGUAL PLAN: The 17 educators were recruited under a program that seeks to empower Taiwanese, the envoy to the Philippines said The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the Philippines on Thursday hosted a send-off event for the first group of English-language teachers from the country who were recruited for a Ministry of Education-initiated program to advance bilingual education in Taiwan. The 14 teachers and three teaching assistants are part of the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which aims to help find English-language instructors for Taiwan’s public elementary and junior-high schools, the office said. Seventy-seven teachers and 11 teaching assistants from the Philippines have been hired to teach in Taiwan in the coming school year, office data showed. Among the first group is 57-year-old
RSS