Stanford Medical Center Clinical Trial of
Treatment for Life-Threatening Lupus

The Stanford Medical Center Division of Immunology and Rheumatology and the Division of Bone Marrow Transplantation are enrolling patients with life-threatening systemic lupus into a new study to determine whether they can be successfully treated with blood stem cell transplantation. The study is supported by the National Institutes of Health. Eligible patients must be at least 18 years old and have lupus with progressive kidney, lung, heart, or central nervous system disease that has not responded to standard therapy. Almost all patients would have been hospitalized previously for lupus.

Eligible patients will be treated in the Stanford outpatient clinics for three weeks to prepare them for injection of blood stem cells that are obtained from a healthy brother or sister whose tissue type matches the patient. Patients will have regular follow-up visits to evaluate their progress. The goal of the study is to replace the abnormal immune cells of the lupus patient that cause the disease with normal immune cells that are generated from the transplanted blood stem cells from the healthy sibling. After transplantation, patients will continue to be followed in the Stanford Clinics.

If you have life-threatening lupus, and are interested in participating in the study, then you should ask your doctor to refer you to the Stanford Immunology and Rheumatology Clinic for evaluation of eligibility for the blood stem cell study. The referral telephone number is 650-723-6961.