Targeted Recall of UK10K Cohort – Cambridge BioResource

Summary

This study is looking at the autoimmune disease Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE), which affects mainly young people and can cause a range of problems including skin rashes, arthritis, kidney disease and brain disease. Although the cause of this disease is so far unknown, we know that genes (currently about 50 have been identified) are important in this process. Understanding how these genes control the cells and proteins of the immune system will give us important information about where to look to understand further what is happening in patients with disease, and therefore which parts of the immune system could be targeted with new treatments. We have found that trying to conduct these studies in patients with SLE is difficult, firstly because the drugs patients take alter the components of the immune system we are looking at and, secondly, because the disease itself causes a lot of changes to the immune system which are a consequence of the disease but not part of the cause of it. Since most of the gene variants we are interested in can also be found in healthy people we think that trying to understand how these networks of genes work in people without disease will be much more productive.

Participation: For this study we recruited 44 volunteers from the Cambridge BioResource to give a 60ml blood sample.