ERLANGEN, Germany — In 2021, researchers in Germany reported something astounding. With a novel approach, they had put a young woman’s lupus — a case so severe that her organs were failing — into remission.
Like other autoimmune diseases, those in which the immune system attacks one’s own body, lupus is a chronic condition — it doesn’t simply go away. The best hope for patients is that their illnesses can be suppressed with continued adherence to drugs. But this 20-year-old woman had seen her disease wiped away. She stopped other medications.
It was just a single case report, and in any case the team wasn’t well-known in the global lupus research world. The paper didn’t gain much traction.
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