Antibodies against p24 of HIV-1 in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus?

ABSTRACT The involvement of retroviruses in the etiopathogenesis of autoimmunity is discussed. Recently antibodies against p24 of HIV-1 were described in patients from Texas with SLE. Therefore we investigated the presence of these antibodies in our SLE collective (German caucasians and blacks from Michigan) employing ELISA and Western blot. No anti-p24 reactivity was observed in our SLE patients in Western blots, suggesting that there may be ethnological or regional differences between our patients those from Texas.