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Chinese Nobel laureate ‘cautiously optimistic’ about progress towards lupus treatment
- Tu Youyou won the 2015 Nobel Nobel Prize in Medicine for her discovery of artemisinin, a herbal extract used to treat malaria
- Tu’s team found that artemisinin may also be effective against the autoimmune disease lupus
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A team of Chinese scientists led by Nobel laureate Tu Youyou are “cautiously optimistic” they have discovered a possible new treatment for lupus, a little-understood disease that involves a patients’ immune system mistakenly attacking healthy tissues and organs.
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Tu, 88, says the first clinical trial proved to effectively treat up to 90 per cent of the patients involved, Xinhua news agency reported. The first of three trials included 14 participants, with numbers to be boosted in subsequent trials.
Lupus erythematosus is a painful and life-changing disease that affects more than five million people worldwide, according to Lupus Foundation of America.
In 2017, American singer and actress Selena Gomez raised awareness of the disease when she underwent a kidney transplant, then aged just 24, as a result of lupus-related organ damage.
Most patients develop the autoimmune disorder between the ages of 15 and 44, and it most often affects women, with only 10 per cent of patients being men. It is also two to three times more prevalent among women of colour – especially African Americans but also, to a lesser extent, Chinese – than among Caucasian women, according to Lupus Foundation of America. Its cause remains unknown.
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